Opinion Q&A with Tim Lawrence - Lachie's manager - chapter 2

[Arcassius]

In the washup of Lachie's contract negotiations - Tim asked me recently what the Freo supporters thought about the whole process and how it went. While I can speak for myself - it's probably something best answered by everyone here.

He's offered to do another Q&A style thread much like the last one - and he's also happy to open it up to general questions.

Obviously knowledge specific to the club, details of the contract, and the like he can't discuss - but feel free to post up your questions here - and i'll pass them onto him to respond to.

if you missed the last Q&A he did - you can read it here

 

[scon]

Sometimes quiet achievers like yourselves get awards Arc.
Did Bigfooty shout pair of you something significant for introducing 'honesty,reasoned explanation and reality' to the site??
Responding to Tim's query about how I looked at it all personally....well,given that I appreciated his candour,professionalism,humour and obvious man management skills,I fully expected the negotiations to unfold just as described and am sure the club,Lachie and Tim are satisfied that a mature and fair result has been achieved and the relationship between all parties has been strengthened in the pursuit of optimal results.
I've said many times on here that I was unable to see why posters would indulge in rumour floating when we'd so obviously been given very honest and realistic parameters about how negotiations were likely to evolve.
Thanks to the pair of you again,was really appreciated that someone who actually did know was happy to share some facts and provide some insight into club,client and process for fans.Thankyou gentlemen!
Look forward to Q&A Episode II

 

[MadDocker]

I feel it was amazingly well handled by Neale and his management. Perth media did their usual beat up, but, team Neale seemed from the outside to play witha straight bat and do what they said they were going to do.

I don't really have any question. I would like to thank Tim for his time and engaging with us all though. It's been one of the highlights of my time here.

 

[Unique Name]

What clubs were chasing him?

Did Lachie have his mind made up somewhat about staying with Freo before the season started?

Did our poor season change his thoughts much?

Was Lachie given a talk to by Bondy/Ross about this future 3 yr rebuild plan before re-signing? Was he happy about it?

Was Lachie's decision based on 'repaying' Freo for drafting him?

How much did Lachie's wanting to win a flag come into the decision?

Thank Arcassius and Tim

 

[Sweetback]

What clubs were chasing him?

Did Lachie have his mind made up somewhat about staying with Freo before the season started?

Did our poor season change his thoughts much?

Was Lachie given a talk to by Bondy/Ross about this future 3 yr rebuild plan before re-signing? Was he happy about it?

Was Lachie's decision based on 'repaying' Freo for drafting him?

How much did Lachie's wanting to win a flag come into the decision?

Thank Arcassius and Tim

Lachie was on SEN today where he answered a few of these questions:
14:00 Crunch Time 16/07/2016 - Lachie Neale, Fremantle midfielder

 

[Righteo]

You're a champ Arcassius.

 

[FD2646]

You're a champ Arcassius.

Agree 100%

 

[scon]

Lachie was on SEN today where he answered a few of these questions:

Expansively intelligent and mature beyond his years.
As well as a developing gattling-gun.
Reiterates everything Tim said about the club being held in high national regard.
Lyon again identified as the fulcrum of the whole process with the enormous interpersonal respect he engenders.

Rely on Slobbo to attempt to muck-rake the interview into any handy journo gutter.

 

[AAACockburn]

Ask him if Lachie thinks Fyfe is really a dead set flog.

 

[Arcassius]

Question from me - does the management recommend a strategy with the player, or does the player indicate early on whether they want to stay or not - and that informs the strategy

 

[scon]

Question from me - does the management recommend a strategy with the player, or does the player indicate early on whether they want to stay or not - and that informs the strategy

Player is employee,employer,central and essential to the process has the power.
At different times with different players it'll go either way.However in Lachie's situation he made the running that informed the strategy by saying 'I will be staying'.

 

[clivenator26]

Tell Tim next time he is negotiating to come out at the start of negotiating and say "KIM HAGDORN HAS NO INSIDE INFO, HE KNOWS NOTHING AND IS A DEAD SET HACK".

 

[Clems Knee]

I have a question (and it's not a criticism even if it reads like one):
According to his SEN interview, Lachie went to Ross Lyon to tell him he was on board before informing his management team of his decision. Did or could that have compromised negotiations between Stride and Fremantle FC?

 

[jedi mind tricks]

I feel it was amazingly well handled by Neale and his management. Perth media did their usual beat up, but, team Neale seemed from the outside to play witha straight bat and do what they said they were going to do.

I don't really have any question. I would like to thank Tim for his time and engaging with us all though. It's been one of the highlights of my time here.

X2

 

[Yeti]

I loved how the negotiations were handled behind closed doors with no title for tat leaking going on.

I think that says as much about the player, player agent and the club regarding how they go about things.

I think back to how we handled the Mitch Clark negotiations and how public and messy it became. The club has certainly come a long way since then.

Who remembers how sneakily we signed Danyle Pearce?

The retention and negotiating strategy seems excellent.

Lachie held a consistent message throughout the entire "speculation" period. Loved it.

If he had of decided to leave, I would prefer he went this way as well.

 

[Seppo]

Did Lachie squeeze any perfomance based KPI's into the contract? And if so what are the common types...
B&F finish? Brownlow Votes? AFLCA?

 

[Arcassius]

Sometimes quiet achievers like yourselves get awards Arc.
Did Bigfooty shout pair of you something significant for introducing 'honesty,reasoned explanation and reality' to the site??
Responding to Tim's query about how I looked at it all personally....well,given that I appreciated his candour,professionalism,humour and obvious man management skills,I fully expected the negotiations to unfold just as described and am sure the club,Lachie and Tim are satisfied that a mature and fair result has been achieved and the relationship between all parties has been strengthened in the pursuit of optimal results.
I've said many times on here that I was unable to see why posters would indulge in rumour floating when we'd so obviously been given very honest and realistic parameters about how negotiations were likely to evolve.
Thanks to the pair of you again,was really appreciated that someone who actually did know was happy to share some facts and provide some insight into club,client and process for fans.Thankyou gentlemen!
Look forward to Q&A Episode II

Thanks mate, it's much appreciated - but Tim does all the work here. It's his time that he offers to contribute to the forums - and he spends far longer at this than I do. I enjoy these as it's a way of 'changing the conversation' and bringing in a point of view that isn't a group of punters making assumptions on how things work based solely on what gets portrayed in the media. Don't thank me - thank him.

 

[Arcassius]

Arcassius asked - Does the management recommend a strategy with the player, or does the player indicate early on whether they want to stay or not - and that informs the strategy


Tim says -

Firstly, thanks everyone for having me back! As Arcassius has already mentioned, there are some areas that are out bounds in regards to what I will say. Privacy towards Lachie, Fremantle and any other clubs is really important so as a rule, I will answer all questions, however, I won’t be at all explicit on:

• The financial or terms of agreement within Lachie’s contract
• Any information provided to Lachie in regards to the ‘future’ of the club; particularly around list management
• The names of any other clubs who made contact with us in regards to Lachie and conversations with them
• Anything else that you may surprise me with!

I’m sure – despite your natural curiosity – you can understand why! I guess maybe this exercise will help further understand different scenario’s and strategies used with these kind of things and where it is appropriate I will bring in what happened with Lachie.

Ok. I guess you have three scenario’s that can happen in the question asked:

1. The player wants to continue his career at the club
2. The player wants to look at all options to make an informed decision on what they want to do – stay or go (undecided at this stage)
3. The player wants to leave

All of these 3 scenarios can occur due to a number of reasons both personal and for career reasons. In all three cases, based around what the player wants, the players management will help create a strategy which is then discussed together, different scenarios are discussed and if the player is comfortable – the plan is put into place.

As I have mentioned some time ago, the strategy and plan for Lachie was put into place in early/mid November last year and we were in the scenario #2 situation.

I need to make it really clear here that at no time did Lachie have any angst with the club or any staff members/departments with the club – either before or during the negotiation process despite what some fairly poor journalism may have reported – nor did we think he would ever leave Fremantle. So then you may ask of course, “ Why didn’t you just start negotiations immediately if he was never going to leave?”

The answer is pretty simple. Whilst at no stage did he ever definitively want to leave, we made a decision to remain as neutral as we could through the process whilst we gathered the required information to make an informed decision. So this means, whilst he wasn’t looking at leaving, we couldn’t have guaranteed he was going to stay either early on in the process because, simply, we wanted to be as neutral as we could to make the best decision free of emotion or rushed, knee jerk decisions based on short term challenges, such as losing games early in the year (as it turned out).

Lachie had 5 key things we needed to consider and were the basis for our decision making/information gathering process. I’m not going to divulge what these 5 key things were, however, I will say that 3 of them were football related and the other 2 were more around off field, personal needs going forward (not financial). So, this contract negotiation wasn’t purely about length of contract and the financial return involved. It was a life decision.

We had some things that we needed to consider for the mid-longer term in Lachie’s life – not just his football career. All of these things required time and patience.

In late November last year, JD and I met Brad Lloyd in Adelaide and we mentioned to him that this process may take some time to complete and in fact, there was a chance that it could go up until the mid-year break. We needed to assure Brad (and the club) there was nothing to panic about, we just needed to have some time to look at all aspects for Lachie and didn’t want any pressure so we created a ‘time line’ which wasn’t set in stone but did give some clarity for the club and I guess, some milestones for us to keep working towards as we moved forward.

Obviously this kind of talk and process can really unsettle a List Manager and club, so we always said – from the word go – that we would be open and honest with the club. We also agreed that Fremantle needed to be our one and only club in discussion for the early stages and we would only engage other clubs IF things were pointing towards his best options being elsewhere or if things went horribly wrong with the pointy end of the contract negotiation between Brad and ourselves. If any clubs approached us, that was obviously fine but at no stage would we accept any offers from them (some really wanted too, trust me!) unless the aforementioned things occurred. In a calendar sense, this would have started happening potentially around now (July) but our information gathering, the eventual positive communication and negotiation with Fremantle meant that this stage never happened. It just wasn’t ever necessary. I should add, we also didn’t want to unnecessarily engage other clubs and waste their time and effort if Lachie wasn’t serious about moving – we wanted to respect them also.

Despite theories in the media and I believe on the Freo BF board, we weren’t going to shop him around to try and leverage a better deal at Fremantle – this included the possibility of us ‘leaking’ information to the media to try and leverage a better deal to Freo.

Whilst no two contract negotiations are the same, as a rule at Stride we don’t engage in this kind of practice. We know that because of our company size (read players of all types) and the experience we have (agents like Jason Dover, Tom Petroro and my counterpart here in SA, Peter Rohde) we know what a player is worth in the industry. Clubs have salary caps and we know that the money is not endless. Each player has a different financial value depending on their playing qualities (Key forwards), experience (games played, finals) and sometimes the club they are at (rebuilding v premiership window) but we firmly believe we know these amounts and experience, plus discussions/ negotiations with club over the years backs this up.

Don’t get me wrong, we want a bit more of the pie for our players and we don’t undersell our clients (believe it or not that does happen) – who doesn’t – but we don’t need to pull out the cans of dried ice and portable mirrors to create diversions which, ultimately, are often a waste of time and ultimately fruitless (however, some agents will disagree with this and that is up to them of course). Whilst I will touch on this later, we would have preferred if Lachie’s name was never mentioned, speculation entered into or rumour fuelled in the media during this time. It was only a hindrance and whilst we understand the intrigue and reporting around it (such is the nature of the beast), it wasn’t helping us in any way and at times, actually caused Lachie some angst.

So, we set some key objectives, developed a time line, informed Fremantle of this time line so they were in the loop (Brad and I kept in regular contact during the whole period I should add) and Lachie would make an informed decision with enough time and space required.

Not once did we deviate from our plan that we set some 8 months earlier. We were really proud of that. I know Fremantle appreciated how we did it (including our handling of the media) and we really appreciated how Fremantle handled it also.

In fact, I sent an email to Steve Rosich a week or so ago to thank him for the way the club not only gave us space but also gave us the required information we needed during the process.

 

[scon]

Don't thank me - thank him.

I did,and certainly will again.
Without Arc there is no Tim on Freo Bigfooty.
Wake up to yourself man.

 

[theGav56]

Ah, obviously too late for this, but I was interested to know about how the actual dollars get negotiated. A 5 minute method I have used and liked is;

Step 1
The employer names the highest salary they have available and the employee the lowest they would consider. If they overlap there is a basis for negotiation and we move to the fair salary step. If not the process is concluded.

Step 2
At the same time each party has named what they consider a fair salary. The understanding is that the agreed salary will be the middle point between these two, and the process is concluded.

 

[scon]

Not once did we deviate from our plan that we set some 8 months earlier. We were really proud of that. I know Fremantle appreciated how we did it (including our handling of the media) and we really appreciated how Fremantle handled it also.

In fact, I sent an email to Steve Rosich a week or so ago to thank him for the way the club not only gave us space but also gave us the required information we needed during the process.

Thanks aplenty Tim.Love the thoroughness of your replies;honesty is much underrated.
It's intelligent/professional people negotiating intelligent/professional decisions/outcomes in an intelligent/professional way;for the best players in the league;and doing it with integrity.Lyon is a unique beast.
It's the Freo I always knew would evolve.

It was only a hindrance and whilst we understand the intrigue and reporting around it (such is the nature of the beast), it wasn’t helping us in any way and at times, actually caused Lachie some angst.

Look forward to what you have to say on this 'cos I would've thought media-biro-jizzing would be easy to ignore.

 

[Okinakashi]

A question for Tim.

Does your management team respond to media BS? Either by contacting the club to reassure or the media outlets to clarify. Some of the stuff in the papers regarding Lachie seemed way off the mark.

And thankyou for your time. Lachie is definitely a fan favourite and seems like a good egg.

 

[Van_Dyke]

A question for Tim.

How did it feel on both your behalf and Lachie's, about what was being said in the media and how much of what was said, true?

 

[Arcassius]

Unique Name asked - What clubs were chasing him? Did Lachie have his mind made up somewhat about staying with Freo before the season started? Did our poor season change his thoughts much? Was Lachie given a talk to by Bondy/Ross about this future 3 yr rebuild plan before re-signing? Was he happy about it? Was Lachie's decision based on 'repaying' Freo for drafting him? How much did Lachie's wanting to win a flag come into the decision?


Tim says -

Thanks Unique Name (which, by the way, it is) for the questions. I may have answered some of these in my first response and Lach answered some of these in an interview on SEN yesterday. I will touch base on the ones I can contribute to.


What clubs were chasing him?

As mention I won’t divulge who they were but I will say the reports were very wrong on some, correct on others and they missed one or two also!

I did spend a lot of time looking at these clubs. In a nutshell, Lachie is very driven for success (that answers your last question) and this was a very important factor to consider so looking at their lists and where they are heading over the next couple of years was very important to look at.

This is easy to say in hindsight I know and could be controversial on this page but Freo’s fall from grace wasn’t totally expected (cue the booing). We didn’t see the 0-10 start (or whatever it was) coming – that was unexpected – but to be honest, for many of the clubs that had approached us, I firmly think that some of these clubs will be behind Fremantle (or certainly no better) in the push for a flag within 2 years (now cue the cheering) and as far as their list profile goes. So that was pretty simple – they probably weren’t ever going to be in the mix (again, if the involvement of other clubs was required – which it wasn’t). There were others that I think could have worked well a far as success goes over the next 2-3 years but again – we didn’t need to go there as it turned out.


Did the poor start to the season change his thoughts much?

I actually said this a few times to the media but no it didn’t. At first I think we were all a bit shocked with the losses but once the decision was made for the ‘kids’ to start playing, it actually gave us a glimpse into the future which was really helpful to us with the decision making process. Lach asked me to fly to Brisbane to give my honest opinion on the new kids as part of the final stages of the decision making process. I felt really comfortable with them already but agreed to do this (anything to get out of Adelaide winter weather!).

Obviously Brisbane aren’t great but I was genuinely excited by what I saw - you have some genuine talent coming through and I know there are a couple on the fringes for various reasons who sound handy also. The next morning (Sunday) on my way to the Brisbane airport to fly back to Adelaide for one of the U18 National Championship games, I sent a text to Brad Lloyd whilst in the cab to see if we could catch up to discuss things further and follow up on some discussions we had been having. We caught up at AAMI Stadium after the game and I told him I was genuinely thrilled with these young lads and he was very excited also. It was one of the final pieces of the puzzle put into place.

I honestly think that the list was a bit older but that along with some injuries to key players plus the evenness of the competition exacerbated the poor start. There will be ups and downs but I feel positive about where the club could be in the mid term.


Was Lachie given a talk to by Bondy/Ross about this future 3 yr rebuild plan before re-signing? Was he happy about it?

Chris Bond isn’t involved with contract negotiations. I’m sure he would be across them due to the nature of his role but I have never had a conversation with him regarding the three contracts for Lachie, nor to the best of my knowledge has Lach. It is Brad Lloyd’s territory.

The first official conversation we had with the club was the Sunday after the Adelaide game over here earlier in the year. Lachie came and stayed with me and Brad flew over from Melbourne to meet at my place and we sat around the kitchen table and had a chat. Lach and I had put together some questions earlier in the week we needed some information on, so he was able to answer them and Brad also showed us the newly formed 4 Year Recruiting and Trading plan for the club – it was something we wanted to know more about. We met for an hour, hour and a half and it was the first step to get the ball rolling with the club. It was really impressive how open Brad was – obviously a lot of the things we saw and discussed was highly confidential – and we really appreciated the time and effort Brad made to fly over for Melbourne just to meet us and the information he gave also. Ross and Chris had offered to stay over in Adelaide for the meeting also but we didn’t feel this was necessary at that stage. Ross and Lachie had a chat before the meeting and Ross let Lachie know the door was open at any time if he needed to know anything which was great by him.

Lachie and I went for a late lunch down at my local after that and it was fair to say, I think the seeds were planted that Freo was looking like the place where he needed to be. It was a really informative, honest (we had some pretty probing questions we needed answers too) and ultimately very positive.


Was Lachie's decision based on 'repaying' Freo for drafting him?

I think as we got close, it became another reason on why he should stay but in a nutshell, no it wasn’t a reason. There are times when there is that kind of thinking for some players and their negotiations, however, this wasn’t one of them – we have gone past that stage now. Ultimately he stayed at Freo because, for a number of reasons, he wanted to be there.

To give you some insight into how he thinks, there was one club who showed some interest early in the piece. Now, whilst we didn’t discuss other clubs at any stage, we are obligated to tell him if a club asks about him so he is informed (part of the rules and regulations for accredited agents). When I told him who the club was, his very quick reply was “F*ck them. They didn’t want to know me in my draft year (they hadn’t interviewed him) so why would I want to play for them now??” I cracked up laughing because I knew exactly what he was going to say and maybe yes, loyalty is important to him also.

 

[Unique Name]

Thankyou for the reply Tim, really great info. Arc thanks for facilitating.