Brendan Macken retires from rugby, aged 29.

[will311293]

I don't think he ever lost the Wasps Family though, i believe his wife/gf is the sister of Jimmy's wife who he met whilst at the club?.  Seems to be like De Jongh and Rieder a brilliant club man, not always the best but gave everything to his team.

Was always good on podcasts when I heard him and did a few episodes of Rugby Pod for Pro 12 at the time.

[Rossm]

Surely one of the  important skills of a DoR is personal communication with individual players.  By that I mean talking to and with each man;  I'm very sorry to hear that  no-one (especially the boss) kept the line of communication open.

I’ve heard /read that once agents are representing, ( particularly football) all negotiations must go through them , and that they (agents) don’t want managers to discuss financial matters with players..
 So it could be that an agent has rejected an offer or the club has rejected an increased demand and neither player or manager would know if info has been passed on.

Why am I not surprised by this?

[hookender]

Surely one of the  important skills of a DoR is personal communication with individual players.  By that I mean talking to and with each man;  I'm very sorry to hear that  no-one (especially the boss) kept the line of communication open.

I’ve heard /read that once agents are representing, ( particularly football) all negotiations must go through them , and that they (agents) don’t want managers to discuss financial matters with players..
 So it could be that an agent has rejected an offer or the club has rejected an increased demand and neither player or manager would know if info has been passed on.

Why am I not surprised by this?

It’s what they get their percentage for

[Rossm]

Surely one of the  important skills of a DoR is personal communication with individual players.  By that I mean talking to and with each man;  I'm very sorry to hear that  no-one (especially the boss) kept the line of communication open.

I’ve heard /read that once agents are representing, ( particularly football) all negotiations must go through them , and that they (agents) don’t want managers to discuss financial matters with players..
 So it could be that an agent has rejected an offer or the club has rejected an increased demand and neither player or manager would know if info has been passed on.

Why am I not surprised by this?

It’s what they get their percentage for

I may be mistaken, but didn't I read somewhere that the cheats have nothing, or as little as possible, to do with agents.  Difficult to take a % of an underthecounter payment I suppose

[hookender]

Surely one of the  important skills of a DoR is personal communication with individual players.  By that I mean talking to and with each man;  I'm very sorry to hear that  no-one (especially the boss) kept the line of communication open.

I’ve heard /read that once agents are representing, ( particularly football) all negotiations must go through them , and that they (agents) don’t want managers to discuss financial matters with players..
 So it could be that an agent has rejected an offer or the club has rejected an increased demand and neither player or manager would know if info has been passed on.

Why am I not surprised by this?

It’s what they get their percentage for

I may be mistaken, but didn't I read somewhere that the cheats have nothing, or as little as possible, to do with agents.  Difficult to take a % of an underthecounter payment I suppose

Maybe if they had , possibly agents would have pointed it out to them

[RogerE]

Perhaps    that's the reason they refused to deal with agents

[Marlow Nick]

I believe the idea was that no one will want to leave Saracens and they would be paying very competitive rates so why not let the players pocket the 10%agent's fee thus giving all players a 10% pay rise. Of course that does require the players to trust that they will be getting market rates (despite some fans claiming all their players willingly got paid less)