Quote: Pat Bateman "I remember years ago we were meant to of signed Michael De Vere from Brisbane only for him to sign for Huddersfield instead, going back on a verbal agreement. He was an SOO and Aussie test centre at the time. Tbf he didn’t pull up trees.'"
Yep there is a long list.
TBF 90% were not signed and sealed so nobody was doing anything wrong, but the moment we showed interest so did others. 10% were pure skullduggery.
A lot depends on the player, some make a decision and stick to it, but like in normal life most can be tempted, just how it is, essentially it's a free market.
Hence we have to be more careful than most, we can't afford a bidding war and for now we've not much else to tempt them with.
If you listen to the podcasts a lot of the Aussie ones have one thing in common, they didn't know much about SL and didn't look too hard.