Reds dig in over Ioane contract

Shouldn't his manager be sorting this out with the third party?? I don't understand what the Reds have to do with organising or being held accountable by Digby and manager for third party deals that might have fallen through? Is a third party deal not with player and another company outside the club. Why should the Reds be held accountable? Digby should be asking the tough questions of his manager but I doubt he has the smarts for this and I bet the manager is deflecting blame onto the Reds

"At some point, we all have to work towards the integrity of contracts,” Carmichael said. What? Work? Integrity? Contracts? Good behavior? Who'd have thought it? +1 to Carmichael.

Very funny, especially the bit about two year loyalties!

Damn, its still amazing money, and its not like they can't work after hanging up their boots.

so are you saying that only the employee representatives should be allowed to selectively leak info, but not the employers?

Let him go! He is another player who sees himself as bigger than the game.

In terms of leaks, the qru are the kings of this demonstrated with the Genia leak via Tim Horan which scuppered the deal.

Or Tony "the man" Mundine.

The club's onligation to set up third party deals... I believe that the Force got in trouble for doing this and understand (or understood) that the club can not solicit third party deals. Mind you, there are different rules for the Force.

Digby has a history of moving around? He has played for 2 super teams and this is his 6th year at the Reds Justin. Hardly a history of moving around.

Thanks guys for that info - guess if the system is simple , less opportunity to have this sort of brinkmanship... Good to se our top guys are earning decent $$, they basically need to squeeze a lifetime of earnings into 10 or so years...

Thank you Harry. The overlay of lies on these things amuses and entertains me grandly. "Toyota Verblitz have offered to pay me 53% of the GDP of Aichi Prefecture, Mr Carmichael. What's your offer eh? Give me your Friday price." "$78,000 plus GST. Do you have an ABN number Mr Ioane?" "Ho, ho, ho - the Unión de Rugby del Uruguay offered me thrice that in February!" "Where's Uruguay?" "Out of Tokyo, about 50 kilometres east of Chosi." "Ha!" I understand, for example, that early this week Ewen McKenzie said "What problem? Digby's happy, there's no problem" yet on the following day Our Digby said (to the effect) "Them QLD Reds mongrels owe me money, thuh mongrels" and Jim Carmichael said "We don't owe Mr Ioane any money." Two out of those three were de-truthing I'd say. There's the threat of a letter, a legal letter no less. In the old days if you really intended to send a letter saying "Steady on old chap, we do have a contract on foot y'know" you'd have Miss Moneypenny in to take it down, bang it out on the Remington, have you sign it and trot it down to the GPO. Mr Piccolone would get a surprise in the mail, splutter "Thuh mongrels!" and head off to Smiff Smiff and Smiff to splutter some more, to which they'd respond "Well they are right you know but we'll see what we can do - please sign this 20 page fee agreement." (code for open a file, start rattling up the hours, throw in a few phone calls and photocopying charges and send out the first weekly invoice for $15,000). Three months later their claim that the current contract was signed under duress gets tossed out when the magistrate remembers the TV press conference smiles, backslaps and declarations of loyalty. They always save the best untruthery until last, for the 6 o'clock news cameras. "We're proud to announce that Mr O'Dollar has re-signed with us and we are one big happy family. Going forward. For a contracted period of 3 years with a specified non unhappiness period of 2 years." (Or perhaps until Friday week when the poor silly plugger discovers what we've offered Braith Anasta).

Nice rant. You have to wonder. Interesting that Link's current article is a very well written piece on selection and player values...I wonder.

:)

Excellent and funny post Mick. Though I thought it was his elder sister rather than Mom who looked after the contracts and paying Digby some pocket mony from the 800K

"Leave Digby alone! He’s only young and should be allowed to follow his dream" Young?? He's 27, so should be matured by now!

Leave Digby alone! He's only young and should be allowed to follow his dream. He's got a big family to support and that makes his motives more honorable than other blokes with responsibilities to merely small families. The Ioanes have been in Australia only a bit over 20 years and it is no doubt difficult migrating to such a foreign place from ..... Wellington. This Carmichael fellow is just nasty, contending that stuff written on paper and signatures and things are important. Clearly he has little experience dealing with creative, talented, special, young people. Anyway Digby was probably poorly advised in 2011 when he turned down $2 million from Japanese club Kubota to accept a meagre $15,000 per week ($800,000 pa) to stay here in 2011. Just two years before, in 2009, Digby said he had a number of attractive offers to consider, "admitting he could follow Berrick Barnes to the NSW Waratahs", but his decision came down to deciding where he would be happiest - and that was at the Reds. This sounded sort of confusing but Digby knew what he was trying to say, you know, like. I think it was an unequivocal declaration of loyalty to QLD. "I couldn't see myself going anywhere else and starting over again, I've played my best footy in Queensland. You've got to be happy where you're going to be and that was always going to be Queensland." (Herald Aug 1 '09) $410,000 odd was where it ended up then (plus car and living-away-from-home allowances) but one can only but imagine the evil cackling from that cunning Robbie Deans, cunning David Nucifora and cunning Jon O'Neill when they heard with whom they would be negotiating: "I'm just leaving it to my mum. She's doing everything for me ... she's taking care of everything. I didn't want to do it by myself because I'd be stressed out." (Herald Jun 17 '09) ... it’s a heavy load preparing for 80 minutes of rugby each week with only 6 and a bit days available to do it. Digby managed to find time away from running laps and doing push-ups to say then that their first offer was "an insult" - the evil trio probably opened with $20 a win plus $5 for each try, take it or leave it. You can see over the years Digby doesn't have much experience in these contract negotiation thingys (much like his familiarity with those try thingys, at two per season for the Wobblies) but it is clear he has been loyal throughout. In 2011 Digby agreed to be loyal to QLD and in 2009 Digby agreed to be loyal to QLD and two years before that Digby agreed to be loyal to Western Force and a couple of years before that Digby agreed to be loyal to Melbourne or was it QLD? I don't know why they don't just rely on his agent to ring in the latest offers from Japan, France and Nicaragua each month so that the QRU / ARU paymaster can regularly adjust the EFT payment to Digby's bank account up to his true worth. About wearing a singlet into the Regatta Hotel – when did pubs start imposing dress codes as a prerequisite to entry? Who knew about that? Before we know it they'll ban stubbies and double pluggers. Sheeesh!

simply, no a set pay structure - which is publicly available on-line - no secret deals The new deal currently being finalised will see the top All Blacks - I read there are three (McCaw, Carter, C Smith) on a total of up to NZ750k a year - AUD$618k. This is an increase from current maximum NZ600k AUD$491k. Easy to see why Japan's million-dollar offers are attractive.

I agree, Carmichael should to enforce the terms of the contract with Ioane. Of course Ioane's manager is playing games with QLD Rugby and the ARU with the aim of extracting more money from rugby. The $800,000 per annum Ioane is making from rugby in Australia is a tidy sum, but relatively small money compared to Japan and Europe. The problem, as I see it, is the ARU and Australian rugby doesn't have the money to pay its best players and keep them in Australia, especially after the ARU recorded an unsustainable loss for the year of >$8 million. The best players are, on an ever increasing basis, not staying in Australia and I assume being pushed by their managers to play overseas for better money. The current set of rules by the ARU of keeping the best players to stay in the S15 by the threat of not playing for Australia on less money is not working. There are many better structures to make the ARU cash positive, keep the Wallabies at its peak performance, maintain the strength of the Australian S15 conference and increase the popularity in rugby in Australia. The ARU and Pulver (who I am sure is a good guy) is not showing the leadership or vision to lead Australia through the next decade of change. The frustrating issue is that many of the Roarers are sitting by and accepting the status quo when it is very clear the problems are not being dealt with by the custodians of the game.

Digby would be dumb to break his contract, that would kill any hope for him in Japan or England, France maybe an option though as it does seem to be an issue re SBW. League is not an option unless he wants to earn about a 1/4 of what he is on in Rugby. So I reckon he is the one with the most to lose. So he would be damaged goods if he did and Australian rugby is not devoid of good wingers, he is not getting, younger. Faster or less injury prone. I would look to lock up Izzy with Digby'smoney. Izzy has far more upside