NRL chief executive David Gallop has accused player managers of hijacking the league’s push for players and agents to be made accountable for the contracts they sign.
With a new rule stating new contracts must be accompanied by a statutory declaration from the player, his manager and club chief executives put on hold while the Rugby League Players Association reviews the guideline, Gallop said the only people who had reason to worry were those who had something to hide.
“Pretty cleary the player agents have hijacked the situation and they’ve hijacked the players association effectively,” Gallop said.
“We haven’t heard from them (player agents) until we inserted a guideline which threatens their opportunity to cheat.”
While Gallop admitted the clause demanding statutory declarations may have been hastily imposed, he said it was done so to include many of the players who are in the process of signing new deals at the moment.
The RLPA were on Tuesday given five days to review the guidelines.
“Everyone came out of the Melbourne situation – including the player agents … with an acceptance that we don’t want to see a repeat of it,” Gallop said.
“Greater transparency and greater accountability on the individuals who are part of the negotiations will be a step closer to ensuring people don’t cheat.
“If you’re not prepared to say `yes, this is the true picture,’ then you’ve obviously got something to hide.
“We’ll give the players association an opportunity to tell us why we shouldn’t have a system where the parties to the playing contract are prepared to say `this is what the player is really getting paid, it’s the fair dinkum contract amount, not some other amount which is not in the contract, which is the situation we dealt with in Melbourne.”
Gallop said he was happy to talk to the Players Agent Association, but denied he was obliged to consult them before moving forward with the new guideline.
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