URC Round 4

First topic message reminder :

Round 4 already and some great games so far. Few of the South African teams getting on the board last weekend so let’s see if they continue that into this week.

Round fixtures (all kick offs BST)

FRIDAY, 15th OCTOBER 2021

Ulster v Emirates Lions- 19.35- BBC NI, RTÉ 2, Premier Sports 1, SuperSport
Dragons v DHL Stormers- 19.35- BBC Wales, SuperSport, Premier Sports 2, SuperSport

SATURDAY, 16th OCTOBER 2021

Zebre v Glasgow Warriors- 13.00- Mediaset, Premier Sports 1
Benetton v Ospreys- 15.05- Mediaset, S4C, TG4, Premier Sports 1
Leinster v Scarlets- 17.15- TG4, S4C, Premier Sports 2
Edinburgh v Vodacom Bulls- 17.15- Premier Sports 1, SuperSport
Munster v Connacht-19.35- RTÉ 2, Premier Sports 2
Cardiff v Cell C Sharks- 19:35- S4C, Premier Sports 1, SuperSport

I think it is fair to say that the Irish sides are the strongest atm, but I do think the league will be pretty competitive this season.

Both Scottish sides look to have potential and are much improved from last year.

Benetton will be tough to beat home or away and even lowly Zebre have picked up from an abysmal first few games and I am sure will win a few home games this season.

South African sides will be a different proposition at home and will win a lot more games there. European sides won't be able to go down there light and expect to win, as they often did against the Kings.

Welsh teams have been disappointing so far. but surely they will improve as the year goes on.

There have been a lot of competitive games so far and I think it is all shaping up very nicely.


It will be more interesting to see where we are in a few years time though, when things have had a chance to settle down.

It just blows my mind our Welsh teams are still surprised by the league standard. While you don't win the league in the opening rounds you can lose it in the opening rounds.  Aside from the Dragons (and I can't believe I am using us as the standard) the other 3 have really looked off the pace at times.  The Irish sides have for years shown us how important starting the opening 5 rounds is (not least the confidence it brings with it).

South African teams haven't played in this league so that is fair enough.  Once they get used to it they will no doubt hit the standards set each opening season.  Us Welsh don't have that excuse.  We've been playing the Irish for 10 years +.

For me the SA teams have finished their most difficult part of the season.  They only get stronger from here as players adapt and they have their top players coming back in.  They also have 4 out their 6 games in Europe already out of the way.  That is a massive thing overlooked.

Of the Top 8 only Osprey's have not played 3 home games.  The only other team to have played 3 home games is Zebre.

While most people expect Leinster, Munster and Ulster to be in the top 4 due to their ability to rotate players in and out without standards dropping.  After them it is anyone's guess.  I still think Sharks will round off the top 4 as their three big games left are Ulster away, Leinster at home and Bulls away.  They already have played Munster, Glasgow and Ospreys so not many hard games left.

Once you get into who has played who I would say Sharks or Zebre had the hardest opening 4 rounds.  Zebre have played Ulster, Glasgow and Leinster aswell as the Lions.

If you look who has played the top 5 you find the following
3/4 Sharks, Zebre
2/4 Dragons, Benetton, Scarlets, Lions

The problem for Connacht and Bulls is they have only one so could be in trouble. Scarlets have taken two beatings which isn't great either.

mikey_dragon wrote:

Welshmushroom wrote:Scarlets are in trouble. They have been shockingly bad the last couple of matches.  Couple more losses like this and their season for Silverware is over.

2 of the next three are in S.Africa as well and given the massive improvement from those sides over the last 2 weeks I can't see them going there in 35 degree heat and getting wins.

If Scarlets do end up losing they may as well start giving outings to the youngsters they have on their books a go.  They need to replace pretty much their entire set of forwards at the club.  The only ones I would be keeping is Wyn Jones, Samson Lee, Morgan Jones, Jac Price & Josh Macleod.  The problem they have not planned for this so not sure where exactly you would start to replace some 20 forwards at the club and remain competitive.  

Hard to judge the backs but given you cant get or keep the ball seems somewhat silly to spend any big money on what you could do with it if they actually managed to keep hold of it.  Its like buying a BMW without wheels.

That would be quite an overhaul mind. Looks like it could be a season or two before Peel manages to turn things around.

Problem is they don't have a couple of seasons. By the time they sort the squad issues out they will already have the regional funding drastically reduced because this will have a knock on effect to the amount of internationals getting selected (granted Pivac is currently giving them all the benefit of the doubt).

Brendan wrote:For me the SA teams have finished their most difficult part of the season.  They only get stronger from here as players adapt and they have their top players coming back in.  They also have 4 out their 6 games in Europe already out of the way.  That is a massive thing overlooked.

Of the Top 8 only Osprey's have not played 3 home games.  The only other team to have played 3 home games is Zebre.

While most people expect Leinster, Munster and Ulster to be in the top 4 due to their ability to rotate players in and out without standards dropping.  After them it is anyone's guess.  I still think Sharks will round off the top 4 as their three big games left are Ulster away, Leinster at home and Bulls away.  They already have played Munster, Glasgow and Ospreys so not many hard games left.

Once you get into who has played who I would say Sharks or Zebre had the hardest opening 4 rounds.  Zebre have played Ulster, Glasgow and Leinster aswell as the Lions.

If you look who has played the top 5 you find the following
3/4 Sharks, Zebre
2/4 Dragons, Benetton, Scarlets, Lions

The problem for Connacht and Bulls is they have only one so could be in trouble. Scarlets have taken two beatings which isn't great either.

Connacht will have a good chance this weekend v Ulster, Ulster still have a lot of injuries to their bigger name players so Connacht in Galway will be a game I could see Connacht winning

neilthom7 wrote:

Brendan wrote:For me the SA teams have finished their most difficult part of the season.  They only get stronger from here as players adapt and they have their top players coming back in.  They also have 4 out their 6 games in Europe already out of the way.  That is a massive thing overlooked.

Of the Top 8 only Osprey's have not played 3 home games.  The only other team to have played 3 home games is Zebre.

While most people expect Leinster, Munster and Ulster to be in the top 4 due to their ability to rotate players in and out without standards dropping.  After them it is anyone's guess.  I still think Sharks will round off the top 4 as their three big games left are Ulster away, Leinster at home and Bulls away.  They already have played Munster, Glasgow and Ospreys so not many hard games left.

Once you get into who has played who I would say Sharks or Zebre had the hardest opening 4 rounds.  Zebre have played Ulster, Glasgow and Leinster aswell as the Lions.

If you look who has played the top 5 you find the following
3/4 Sharks, Zebre
2/4 Dragons, Benetton, Scarlets, Lions

The problem for Connacht and Bulls is they have only one so could be in trouble. Scarlets have taken two beatings which isn't great either.

Connacht will have a good chance this weekend v Ulster, Ulster still have a lot of injuries to their bigger name players so Connacht in Galway will be a game I could see Connacht winning

I think it's in the Aviva.

I thought Ulster looked laboured but they have been ruthless in getting 4 tries which I see as a sign of a good team. They have had a bunch of injuries but their standard hasn't dropped which says to me their first and second teams are very close. I think Ulster have a real shot at taking Leinster down this year. In the league it's the only team they have a mental block against.

That Ulster next game after the international break v Leinster too, no Vermuelen for that one so it will be a real good test of where they are at.

I do think we have benefited too by who we played during the injuries as well so while it has been good I suspect against stronger teams there would be a drop off in quality from the first team era that are missing to the second teamers.

I think the next 3 fixtures for Ulster (all away from home will show us where they are). Connacht, Leinster and Ospreys away could all end up as losses potentially although confidence looks good with them at the moment and we all know how important a good start in the campaign impacts teams.

I don't think Ulster will be that affected by call ups but neither will Connacht or Ospreys so those will be interesting games.

Scarlets have a must win game against Treviso this weekend. If they lose that it could be the end of their season in all competitions. They have 4 out of 5 away games after that with 2 in S.Africa against Bulls and Sharks. The only glimmer of hope in the Champions Cup is one of those matches is against Bristol away who are having a terrible season. But realistically even if they win it's clear they haven't got a chance of doing anything in Europe this season.

Going to be hard to judge Peel on the back of that as I would have preferred a tried a tested head coach but to be fair to him he has inherited that squad and it clearly needs a complete clear out.

Brendan wrote:

The Oracle wrote:Possible knock on for Leinster’s try???

I thought that when they showed the replays

It was comically forward. The ball is behind Lowe who reaches back for with while running forward. He touches the ball, it goes up and forward by a metre (you can literally gauge the distance against the advertising hoarding behind the ball) before hitting the ground and a linesman (right there), a referee (almost in line with play) and the TMO (a blind idiot) all say backwards. It was ridiculous. The TMO never challenges the ref, just agrees with him.... the ref sees a replay and starts thinking 'hmmm' so asks the TMO 'that ball went backwards, right?'. TMO not wanting to question the ref replies 'backward?... yeah yeah... backward'.

Welshmushroom wrote:I think the next 3 fixtures for Ulster (all away from home will show us where they are). Connacht, Leinster and Ospreys away could all end up as losses potentially although confidence looks good with them at the moment and we all know how important a good start in the campaign impacts teams.

I don't think Ulster will be that affected by call ups but neither will Connacht or Ospreys so those will be interesting games.

I don't think we will be affected by call ups too much, most of the players who would be in with a shout of a call up have been injured and so haven't played.

Its a good time to play Ulster either side of the international break, right now they have a lot of good players out injured and even if they heal up and return during international break most of them have had no game time so would be going into a Leinster game cold, also Vermuelen doesn't join to after Leinster game either

thebandwagonsociety wrote:

Brendan wrote:

The Oracle wrote:Possible knock on for Leinster’s try???

I thought that when they showed the replays

It was comically forward. The ball is behind Lowe who reaches back for with while running forward. He touches the ball, it goes up and forward by a metre (you can literally gauge the distance against the advertising hoarding behind the ball) before hitting the ground and a linesman (right there), a referee (almost in line with play) and the TMO (a blind idiot) all say backwards.  It was ridiculous.  The TMO never challenges the ref, just agrees with him.... the ref sees a replay and starts thinking 'hmmm' so asks the TMO 'that ball went backwards, right?'.  TMO not wanting to question the ref replies 'backward?... yeah yeah... backward'.

I have to admit the TMO work during the URC has been unsatisfactory. The first issue I have is it is not consistently applied. some incidents bear the scrutiny of the ages and others barely gets a glimpse.

Then there is the fact that most TMO's seem to not have the confidence to contradict the referees.

Yeah I have to say from all the games I have seen some of the Refs have been poor. Even the TMO stuff bothers me. I'm saying this from a neutral perspective for games where I wasn't on either teams side.

The thing I noticed especially in Ireland is that the TMO's are mostly Irish. It's all well and good having a Ref on the park from a neutral country but why would this rule not also apply to TMO's. Some of the TMO work has been seriously questionable.

The league needs to have a structure in place for all the various country refs. Somebody needs to be put in charge of all of them and be given the power to remove or add ref's based on their performance. Granted any ref (just like a player can have a bad game) but if you don't hold them accountable then what prevents consistent mistake. Personally the league needs to decide on what they want from all the Refs. But they also need to bench refs if they persistently make mistakes. The same should be the case for TMO's.

It clearly is a problem URC needs to address.

Yep, saw the "try" awarded to Munster this weekend vs Connacht, vlear offside in front of kicker.

You have to wonder how someone professionally trained cannot see blatant offsides

It's even to the point where there have been a few TMO calls to the refs for foul offence plays where even though the Ref had seen the original offence reviewed the screen only for the Ref to say my decision stands and there is nothing wrong with my call.

It's almost as if the TMO's are trying to push for cards or penalties which to me as a neutral then looks like either a home town TMO decision or at the very best a situation where TMO's are not on the same page as the refs in the league.

In my mind TMO's need to be held as accountable as refs. Some of them currently are as bad as some of the poor refs running around in the league.

The URC really need to address this if the league is going to retain any kind of credibility.

I have seen charge downs on kickers deemed "avoidable"

I have seen players penalised " for not being in a realistic position to catch a ball"

I have seen players penalised for literally being pushed into a player in the air.

I have seen tackles seen as late literally where the tackler have already launched into a passer.

I have seen some tries scrutinised and others not.

I have seen major inconsistencies at the breakdown, mainly against the attacking team which just kills momentum, causing the attacking team to lose territory and possession for sustained periods of time.

I have seen matches where one team is blown off the park in the first half then having to fight to catch up, only to get a couple of "corrective penalties" later in the game just to not skew the penalty count too much.

Yeah I have seen those couple of things you mentioned too.  That said obviously refs will make mistakes sometimes.  Its the nature of it.  No one is perfect.

What concerns me more is how things like scrums are being reffed at the moment.  I have noticed an alarming amount of scenarios where packs are walking left/right on scrums instead of scrumming straight.  People will see this is just players being clever but I am noticing this is done by specific teams.  If for example a ref does not pick this one up on a match fair enough but why are refs not then addressed and made sure to hold those teams to account in future games.  If you allow players/teams to stretch the laws of the games they will continue these practices.  

Its the same at the breakdown.  There are teams who are intentionally killing or slowing ball down.  We all want to see flowing rugby and generally the best sides will win regardless.  I also don't think cards are being dished out equally.  So the bigger teams are getting the benefit of the doubt while others are just getting binned.  Personally if they can just simply start carding negative play teams will be forced to abandon this kind of strategy.  There's been at least a dozen cases of this in the opening 4 rounds where I would simply started to have yellow carded players.  The fact teams are getting multiple ticking offs before offences doesn't help.  

Lets be honest there are sides in the league who intentionally break the laws of the game to try to gain advantages.  The Refs primary job should be to cut this out.  

I also noticed the trend of multiple players talking to the ref for decisions.  We need to stamp this out of the game - its already hard enough as is.  Leinster for example at the weekend where awful for this.  They don't need to do this and will win games regardless.  But unless you start coming down hard on players you won't stop this sort of stuff from happening.

Yep agree with those sentiments and like to add mauls.

It just makes no sense to me

Be interesting to see what happens with this Agent dispute in the Premiership. South African sides will have it much easier to sign some of those players back if they don't end up in the TOP14 or Japan.

Given the TOP14 still has non french qualified player restrictions they can't simply sign every nations internationals. And often they tend to focus recruitment on signing players from the same league in order to weaken teams that might be challenging them. They still grab the odd superstar from abroad but most of TOP14 transfers are usually internal league movements.

You can understand this strategy as teams are not only strengthening themselves but weakening sides that they compete against. Dragons have had this problem for a long time where other welsh teams have come in for our players just to weaken our side further.

What agent dispute are you referring too? I don't know anything about it.

https://www.google.com/amp/rugbyandthelaw.com/2021/10/07/premiership-rugby-clubs-agents-fee-dispute-players-salary-cap/amp/

It’s an issue about who pays agents fees basically in Premiership rugby

Old Man wrote:What agent dispute are you referring too? I don't know anything about it.

Up until now a lot of agents invoiced the english rugby clubs for work they do representing their player. So (numbers as placeholders) an agent negotiates 100k per annum contract for a player with a club. The agent charges the club 20k. The club pays out 120k. Lets say top end tax band is 50% to be simples too, so player sees 50k hit their bank account.

HMRC might ask how the agent invoice is related to the club and not the player. The clubs in response want to pay the 120k per annum to the player so that the player then pays 20k to the agent, but the player is taxed so they get 60k after tax into their bank account then need to pay the agent 20k and are left with 40k for themselves.

Clubs still pays 120k. Agent still gets 20k. HRMC get 60k (10k more). Player left with 40k (10k less).

Unless players could claim a full deduction of the agents cost off their income, the player loses out on this. If the club doesn't pass it down, the club would pay 100k to player, 20k to agent and 20k to HMRC.... potentially.

I'm open to being corrected, tax rate is only to keep the math simple and all figures are examples.

English Clubs have said they are stopping payments to Agents directly and that players will have to pay them out of their money.

Agents have come out and said no player will sign a contract with a Premiership club moving forward. If the owners stick to their guns they will lose players. If they don't change this stance they know French sides wont sign players in droves purely on the foreign quota in the TOP14 and the new 5 years residency. Additionally France new FQ system only applies to players in academies which means French sides are looking to sign youngsters early to bypass the system. So most established in the Premiership simply won't have an option to go play in France.

That in turn will leave URC Teams potentially able to pick up some talent from over the bridge. Granted Welsh & Irish sides still have overseas quotas as well so that will be limited.

That I would imagine would mean Scotland, South Africa and Italy could benefit from this dispute.

The agent fees is an interesting one and I wonder how much of this comes down to the lower wage cap and the way some clubs like Sale tried to push through new contracts quickly which agents may have slowed down when they had the deadline. Plenty ex-players talked about people being given 24hrs to sign a new deal.

From what I have seen with soccer once the big agents stop doing business with the league and take away their stars the next level of players follow suit.

With the lack of growth in commercial rights you would wonder if this is the PRLs attempt to slow the flow of players but could end up speeding it up. I have noticed there seems to be more players from overseas being picked up by URC clubs than in recent years

Great thanks for the info.

thebandwagonsociety wrote:

Old Man wrote:What agent dispute are you referring too? I don't know anything about it.

Up until now a lot of agents invoiced the english rugby clubs for work they do representing their player. So (numbers as placeholders) an agent negotiates 100k per annum contract for a player with a club. The agent charges the club 20k. The club pays out 120k. Lets say top end tax band is 50% to be simples too, so player sees 50k hit their bank account.

HMRC might ask how the agent invoice is related to the club and not the player. The clubs in response want to pay the 120k per annum to the player so that the player then pays 20k to the agent, but the player is taxed so they get 60k after tax into their bank account then need to pay the agent 20k and are left with 40k for themselves.

Clubs still pays 120k. Agent still gets 20k. HRMC get 60k (10k more). Player left with 40k (10k less).

Unless players could claim a full deduction of the agents cost off their income, the player loses out on this.  If the club doesn't pass it down, the club would pay 100k to player, 20k to agent and 20k to HMRC.... potentially.

I'm open to being corrected, tax rate is only to keep the math simple and all figures are examples.

I don't think this is quite how it works.  

Under the new scheme lets just take a 200K salary as this does not receive any allowance.  I think agent fees are 15% on average.  The club will only pay the player the full 200K which I am assuming is payed via PAYE as they are infact employees.  So Initially the player will be taxed on the basis of 200K at 50% so will lose 100K to tax.  But they will then however be able to reclaim the agents fees as a allowable expense.  So Essentially will get a rebate from the tax office of 15K against the taxes he has already paid (200K-30K at 50% = 85,000).  (although this probably is more because they will be able to deduct accountant fees and other general expenses as well). Net take home therefore is 85K in that scenario for player if we assume no other expenses.

Currently however they have only been paying 50% of the agents fees via payroll with Clubs paying the other 50% themselves.  So the Clubs would then be paying 215K under the current way things are done.  The player ends up having 50% taken during PAYE so then end up working out for the player as (200K-15K at 50% = 92,500 tax). Player ends up with 92,500.

The real problem with the change comes for the lower paid rugby players.  The costs essentially will hurt those players the most.  Granted anyone under 100K will still get some personal allowance but essentially it no doubt will be a real problem.

So that will lead to 2 possible scenarios.  1 - non established players on low wages stop going with agents. 2 - agents push players to other countries

Agents are saying option 2 is the only option on the table.  The issue is owners already know the Top14 won't absorb the 400 players in the Premiership as they already have salary commitments themselves.

On the payment side of things the dispute with HMRC is how much of the cost is a benefit in kind. It seems to me the PRL clubs don't want the HCMR doing audits and paying agent fees might result in one.

You would have to feel with the recent England cul, players like the Billy, Ford etc who might wonder if their England days are over and will look yo go overseas anyway.

But the clubs going to war with the agents will only end badly for the clubs in my view.

Why do players meed agents?

If I was a professional rugby player I would negotiate my own deals.

Another side issue is because clubs have essentially handled all the other submissions for the player. In order to then correctly report the expenses most players will likely have to higher an accountant to submit the reclaims. That in turn will add the accountants fees to the scenario.

Granted all high profile players already have accountants to no doubt deal with appearance fees and image rights money the effect won't hit them as hard.

But guys on salaries under 100K will simply see their net take home plummet. What makes it worse is they don't really have bargaining power either. Top 14 clubs won't be paying top dollar for low profile players.

I don't really see the Agents be able to turn this argument around and will be forced to transition as many players out of the league as possible because as we have seen previously the Club Owners always tend to stick to their guns.

Its the players who lose contracts and won't have any clubs who will get screwed hardest.

Old Man wrote:Why do players meed agents?

If I was a professional rugby player I would negotiate my own deals.

That is a valid point. Generally most sports have agents. That said most sports also have to deal with commercial deals etc. Rugby this is hardly the case. Very few players in Rugby have commercial deals in place.

People like Rob Kearney for example did this for his entire career. In football with so many clubs around the world you could see getting contracts and offers is a bit of a nightmare. Personally I don't think agents really add anything to current rugby professionals because there is no real advertising money in the sport etc. So essentially your paying a 15% fee for someone to call some clubs to see if they are interested and then haggle a best offer. To be fair though not everyone is comfortable dealing with their own financial aspects. Each to their own I guess.

But at the very least if I was a rugby player I would be challenging why they are charging me 15% in the first place because for example they wont be providing the same service as a NFL, Football or any other sport agent for that matter as they will add zero value in terms of commercials advertising deals. On that basis alone I would be arguing agents shouldn't be charging more than 7.5%.

Agents will of course argue how their charges are justified.

I can think of ways where player associations of Unions can very easily set up a web page on their sites that provide player profiles on players wanting to play in overseas clubs.

Player associations are usually run by x players who knows what is required, and these player associations already take care of quite a bit of negotations with their respective Unions.

Player A for example let his association know he is looking for an overseas club, and what his requirements for a contract is.

Overseas clubs just go to that page and start shopping, the players association can then take a small fee which in turn helps the players in his country

The reason this issue will be inflated however will be the Agents.  They of course have their own interest in mind.  If players followed option 1 and stopped having agents they will simply be out of a job.  Some of these agents also rely on a bulk of their income from rugby.  So they will hardly be impartial when advising their players.  

But in truth this is just rugby following templates of already established sports which do the same thing that is being implemented here.  Football or NFL clubs for example dont pay agents.

So the question then becomes if this does end up being the case how long before other rugby leagues implement this.  They probably see how this all washes out before A) following suit B) take advantage of the situation.

Old Man wrote:I can think of ways where player associations of Unions can very easily set up a web page on their sites that provide player profiles on players wanting to play in overseas clubs.

Player associations are usually run by x players who knows what is required, and these player associations already take care of quite a bit of negotations with their respective Unions.

Player A for example let his association know he is looking for an overseas club, and what his requirements for a contract is.

Overseas clubs just go to that page and start shopping, the players association can then take a small fee which in turn helps the players in his country

Not a bad premise. Problem is at some point people get greedy and how long before the player association increases its own fees?

Bottom line is Premiership have been paying agents to the fee of 6 million a season. They literally could hire 4 full time agents to handle the entire leagues contracts and run some universal online portal where players out of contracts where various mangers could log on and see who is out of contract and available for offers. If that scheme was also rolled out universally all Unions would end up paying substantially less money in Agents fees.

At the end of the day Agents only end up taking money out of the game instead of it actually increasing players pay. I'd prefer to see players wages go up than lining pockets of people who literally add nothing to the sport.

Welshmushroom wrote:

Old Man wrote:I can think of ways where player associations of Unions can very easily set up a web page on their sites that provide player profiles on players wanting to play in overseas clubs.

Player associations are usually run by x players who knows what is required, and these player associations already take care of quite a bit of negotations with their respective Unions.

Player A for example let his association know he is looking for an overseas club, and what his requirements for a contract is.

Overseas clubs just go to that page and start shopping, the players association can then take a small fee which in turn helps the players in his country

Not a bad premise.  Problem is at some point people get greedy and how long before the player association increases its own fees?

Bottom line is Premiership have been paying agents to the fee of 6 million a season.  They literally could hire 4 full time agents to handle the entire leagues contracts and run some universal online portal where players out of contracts where various mangers could log on and see who is out of contract and available for offers.  If that scheme was also rolled out universally all Unions would end up paying substantially less money in Agents fees.

At the end of the day Agents only end up taking money out of the game instead of it actually increasing players pay.  I'd prefer to see players wages go up than lining pockets of people who literally add nothing to the sport.

Usually these player associations have a drafted constitution which can fix these costs as part of the member fees

Yeah but those costs rise over time. English rugby players already had an issue with the current players associations as they haven't been doing a good job on player welfare and other issues. I believe Ellis Genge tried to address this and create a new player body that would service players better.

He gave up on it in the end once he realized the road block in a lot of these cases was the club owners who simply didn't really pay any attention to player requirements regardless of Union pressure. Added to that he simply did not get much support from other players in England.

Basically its the owners who pay the piper and get to call the shots. But that's the way of business. People buying essentially will always have more power than people selling.

As I said this could work out very well for S.African club sides

Would be nice if it did.

I am sure the agents are well aware of all the side deals and creative pay structures clubs agree too.  I would be fairly confident that the agents could hang most clubs on wage breaches.

I would never underestimate the power of the agents.  There is a reason that super agents can make impossible deals happen They also know how to talk business and put into words what the player wants.

I don't know how many players have a clue what their deals are just know what goes into their account and when the deal finishes.

I wasn't saying Agents don't have power. They do, especially at the very top end with star players. And no doubt players trust them in the first place so whatever narrative is being spun they will obviously side with the Agent.

My point on this is that the trigger of agents simply moving players on is a little mute. Sure the top 80 guys in the league may get moves abroad, I doubt they will be able to relocate 400 odd players to other leagues. Other leagues won't have that kind of money available as they already have squad commitments. Not to mention it would saturate the market thus lowering wages anyway as no doubt those clubs would see the fast amount of talent available as a chance to low ball players.

The end result will be some 200 players in England will have to accept this deal regardless and the issue for them is it will be the bottom end who this change affects most. Agents of course also will be affected.

I just wonder how many other leagues may follow suite. The Welsh & Irish brought the 25% covid salary cuts only after England started down this route. I can totally see a scenario with Welsh Regions following suite.