Player managers: discuss.

[Robroy22]

With all the contracted players coming out requesting trades one wonders where they are getting their advice?
Maybe each club could have one manager for all their players....that'd fix em!
So....are they blood sucking leeches or failed real estate agents? What's your opinion on where player managers are attempting to take the clubs?

 

[Lord Wilberforce]

What is there to discuss? AFL managers are a pretty low form of life.

 

[danielnajdek]

Are flogs...

 

[76woodenspooners]

Player agents are a necessary evil.

Have a look at how the Travis Cloke contract negotiations went (with father David) for an insight into what contract negotiations would be like without them.

 

[Robroy22]

How is it any different, obstinate parent or greedy manager?
Seriously though don't you think that their advice is getting just a little bit "out there" if they're advising contracted players to seek backdoor deals?

 

[Reykjavik]

Player managers arent attempting to take the clubs anywhere. They care less than the steam off a fly's urinary output for the clubs. Which is fine; they arent supposed to. They act for their clients, and their clients' best interests often diverge from the clubs.

The problem is the AFL allowing, for reasons of expediency on occasions, and caving to the AFLPA on others, a situation to develop where player movemen rules and restictions of poaching clearly mean nothing.

When the AFL got involved in setting up rules to encurage poaching in order to help the new franchises, then bent over themselves in gymnastic glories to allow Sydney to abuse the system to get Tippett, the rot began. Free agency and the Buddy debacle merely completed the demolition.

The message was clear; you are the power now. The clubs can suck it up. The outbreak of overreach this season is just a symptom of a fundamental shift in power the players probably sense even if they are too brain dead to put it into words. Their managers are more than capable of putting it into words though, and actions.

As I have said before, and say again.

Absent the AFL actually backing the clubs, everyone just became a free agent. Everyone. It's a new world. I just dont blame the managers, blame belongs squarely with the AFL.

 

[TradeDraft]

They care about only 1 thing and that is $$$$$$$$$$

 

[Collingwood HQ]

Slowly the blame is starting to fall to the manager after all other candidates have been exhausted.

 

[Old Spice]

As far as they go Connors is actually a very good one when you consider his mission. He got Ball to Pies.

Player managers like Peter Jess, who managed Krakouer, is a major idiot. Was asking us to cough up 500k for him post the first contract.

That doesn't mean we shouldn't put the squeeze on player managers in the interest of our club. Other player managers want to poach their clients so I would suggest we look to get players to think about moving across from Connors if he tries to bone us. Make him think about his own back-pocket.

 

[MoreMoore]

With all the contracted players coming out requesting trades one wonders where they are getting their advice?
Maybe each club could have one manager for all their players....that'd fix em!
So....are they blood sucking leeches or failed real estate agents? What's your opinion on where player managers are attempting to take the clubs?

Seems to be a common thread: Connors!

 

[PieNSauce]

One thing that is apparent in the Beams situation is that someone made a massive miscalculation. Have a feeling that most people believe it lies with an individual who is neither player or recruiter.

 

[Buckley is my hero]

One thing that is apparent in the Beams situation is that someone made a massive miscalculation. Have a feeling that most people believe it lies with an individual who is neither player or recruiter.

I agree with old spice on this one. Paul Conners is one of the better player managers at getting players to the club of their choice and negotiating pay packages for his players. He has done favours for Collingwood in the past, at getting players to our club. It works both ways. In this instance, he is working on behalf of his client to satisfy Beam's request to relocate to a club closer to his family. It was Brisbane that offered Beams the big money to defect. I'm sure it wasn't Conners advising Beams not to attend the Copeland trophy. He is only fulfilling a role. Sometimes the players have to take responsibility for their actions.

 

[Baltimore Jack]

Do we want players to concentrate as much of their time as pssible on their footy or would we be criticising them for losing focus while they attempted to negotiate a new contract?
Perhaps its just easier to criticise them from the get go no matter what they do

 

[PieNSauce]

I agree with old spice on this one. Paul Conners is one of the better player managers at getting players to the club of their choice and negotiating pay packages for his players. He has done favours for Collingwood in the past, at getting players to our club. It works both ways. In this instance, he is working on behalf of his client to satisfy Beam's request to relocate to a club closer to his family. It was Brisbane that offered Beams the big money to defect. I'm sure it wasn't Conners advising Beams not to attend the Copeland trophy. He is only fulfilling a role. Sometimes the players have to take responsibility for their actions.

You might be right but then again you might just as well be wrong. Either way, something definitely does not smell right here and I don't particularly like the aroma.

 

[PepperFace]

Liam Pickering is slime

 

[BlackWhiteBlood]

As in all jobs there are good ones and there are bad ones. We really have no idea who screwed up the Beams trade. For all we know Conners from the start was telling Brisbane that we would be requesting a player, but they decided they know better. On the other hand, he might have been told them draft picks would get the job done. The job of a player manager is to advise a player on what to do and his worth, but at the end of the day they do what the player tells them to do, then they act as intermediaries between player and club.

FWIW I am prepared to give Conners the benefit of the doubt on this one, looking at Brisbane's recent trade history, Tippet, Ryder, Beams and the GH5 from last year, they could not get laid in a woman's prison with a briefcase full of pardons.

 

[rose jam]

They get rewarded for making their players contract bigger, they need to be regulated

 

[Baltimore Jack]

They get rewarded for making their players contract bigger, they need to be regulated

They are

 

[Robroy22]

I think I'd like Eddie as my PM....he'd only ever do what was right for CFC.

 

[didaksrightfoot]

With all the contracted players coming out requesting trades one wonders where they are getting their advice?
Maybe each club could have one manager for all their players....that'd fix em!
So....are they blood sucking leeches or failed real estate agents? What's your opinion on where player managers are attempting to take the clubs?

They are necessary & they have a valid role to play- to do all the negotiating that a 20-something sportsman is usually not equipped to do.

I have no problems with a manager shopping a player around to see what the level of interest is... But there needs to be more regulation on the system & and clubs need more powers to trade

 

[76woodenspooners]

This article is around a year old, but it's an interesting one and still relevant ...

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/sport/a...e-to-print-money/story-fni5f22o-1226733758831

Now, the AFLPA accredits more than 80 agents — roughly one for every 10 AFL-listed players. Competition for talent is fierce and the agent’s reality is far less glamorous than might be imagined.

There are a handful at the top — including Craig Kelly's Elite Sports Properties, Liam Pickering’s Strategic and Paul Connors with Connors Sports Management — who boast the lion’s share of the game’s biggest stars.

A second tier of agencies includes Stride, Velocity and McDonald Sports.

Ricky Nixon — an industry pioneer who started managing players in 1992 — says the likes of Kelly, Connors and Pickering get a free kick from brand recognition and star power.

They can pick up a handful top draft prospects because of who is already on their books.

But even they must have more strings to their bow than simply looking after footballers’ contracts if they want to succeed financially.

For the rest, as one former agent put it: “There are so many agents now — there is no money to be made”.

“People confuse seeing agents in the media with (them) being suddenly rich from it”.

Another said: “If it’s your only job, I don’t know how you are going to survive”.

An agent’s whack from doing a standard contract is usually 4 per cent.

Roughly, the player managers’ collective cut from the near $175 million in total player payments is $7 million.

A Sydney-based sports agent told the Herald Sun he “wouldn’t touch footy with a 10-foot pole” because it lacked the international factor that makes other sports — such as rugby and, in more recent times, cricket — so profitable.

Read more at ...

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/sport/a...e-to-print-money/story-fni5f22o-1226733758831

 

[76woodenspooners]

How is it any different, obstinate parent or greedy manager?

A good manager who is good at what they do will know about this thing called the salary cap, and have some sense of understanding how their client would be valued by a club within that. A good manager will have some understanding how a player fits within a club's needs.

Seriously though don't you think that their advice is getting just a little bit "out there" if they're advising contracted players to seek backdoor deals?

Not sure what you mean by 'back door deals' ... But this deal had the potential to work out well for everybody. If only Brisbane valued Beam's contract consistently with his salary. Trust me, if Collingwood had ended up with 5 + 25 + Aish then everybody would have walked away happy.

 

[Old Spice]

I think Connors is a great player agent but that doesn't stop us squeezing his nuts in the way he is squeezing ours. He is leveraging a soft point in us and we should hit him where it hurts in order to make him amenable to convincing Beams to take a trade at another club that works for all. I'd be getting into new recruits who will come into big coin and suggesting they go with x. y, z recommended agents. I'd be happy to have us recommend agents who aren't trouble for us and take lower percentages of player contracts (boon for player who gets more) and we pay these agents 'consultation' fees.

The imprimatur for us is the club, 1st, 2nd and 3rd.

 

[Pie eyed]

Ricky Nixon was a player manager...........
They start off a very, very low base.
in the vicinity of snakes arseholes and worms balls.

 

[Pie eyed]

Ricky Nixon was a player manager...........
They start off a very, very low base.
in the vicinity of snakes arseholes and worms balls.

That said they are better than players Dad's in most cases.