Greg Florimos Boots wrote:
Maybe Bradford can split the cost for the illegal approach with the other Championship teams and the SL team who all made him offers. Unless that did not happen and his agent was telling porkies.
I think your confusion is growing to epic proportions, so i'll try to help.
1. of all the people in the world, even counting Chisholm, perhaps THE most likely to know whether he was or was not free to sign elsewhere is his agent. Seeing as it is his job to find Chisholm a gig.
2. As for his agebt "telling porkies", what are you saying? That his agent out of the blue got offers from several teams, who all mistakenly and mysteriously decided randomly to make an offer to some guy already signed by some other team, regardless of the rules? And they all did that?
Or, as Occam would conclude, they had all been circulated as to Chisholm's availablity and had assumed the information was correct?
Which are you putting your money on?
3. There IS no "cost of illegal approach". IF you induce someone to breach their contract then you might have to pay damages if the other club sue you (believe me, we know) but there is no evidence at all that we did any such thing. Irrespective of that, even if we did, if as we are told he's a free agent in a few weeks anyway, any damages would be minimal and not worth bothering with. As damages in civil law simply reflect the actual cash loss and Sheffield would be hard pressed to demonstrate any cash loss.
What you may have been thinking of is a possible fine by the RFL (ie into RFL coffers, and not to Sheffield) for an illegal approach. But can you really see that? Without knowing, again my chum Occam strongly suggests that all these clubs wouldn't have made offers without being told he was free to make offers to, and so if all these clubs have been misled, then do you really think the RFL would fine them? What would be the point?
Can anyone remind me how much Shudds were fined in relation to Kopczak, and what additional penalties they faced for lying to the RFL about their approach?