'F*** you, you're a liar, don't ever talk to me ever again'

Ex-England international Andy Goode has recalled the tempestuous time in his lengthy career when an agent unsuccessfully tried to convince him to sign for relegation-threatened Rotherham rather than re-join Leicester. The story emerged on the latest edition of The Rugby Pod, the show that the former out-half hosts with ex-Scotland lock Jim Hamilton.

The pair had been chewing the fat on the current row involving clubs and agents in England over the payment of fees. They are usually paid by the clubs to agents but the clubs now want players to foot the bill for agents’ fees and a row has developed about the situation in recent weeks.

Hamilton told listeners about the issue: “Players need agents, it’s as simple as that. It’s a part of professional sport.” Goode added: “The whole issue around it has become messy. The clubs and the agents are so far apart at the moment… it’s a dangerous position to put the players in.”

What happened when RugbyPass went behind the scenes at the Leicester Tigers academy

What happened when RugbyPass went behind the scenes at the Leicester Tigers academy

Their conversation, though, eventually led to Goode recalling the winter of 2003 when he went from leaving Saracens following a 40-minute run in a 33-3 November loss at Sale to playing the full 80 for Leicester in a 39-11 Boxing Day win over Leeds five weeks later.

The switch resulted in Goode having an irrevocable falling out with his then-agent and moving his business to a representative he went on to work with for the remainder of a lengthy career where he was capped by England and also played for Brive, Sharks, Worcester, Wasps and Newcastle.

'I also experienced another agent trying to push me towards a club because he owed them a favour when it didn’t suit me at all.' @AndyGoode10 ??? #GallagherPrem https://t.co/PmJMJ0jYQn

— RugbyPass (@RugbyPass) October 9, 2021

“Very early in my career when I was leaving Saracens, I had an agent at the time who was trying to push me to play for Rotherham because it suited him,” explained Goode on the show. “He was like, ‘Mate, go to Rotherham, just go there until the end of the season, play well and then we will get you a deal somewhere else’. It transpired that this agent owed Rotherham a bit of a favour. He was mates with the head coach at the time. I’m like, ‘I ain’t going to Rotherham for love nor money’. Nothing against Rotherham but they had played eight, lost eight and were definitely going down.

“I said, ‘I ain’t playing. There is no interest there’. The flip side of that, Dean (Richards) had phoned me directly and said, ‘Andy, I want you to come back to Leicester’. I said, ‘I’ll drive up there now and sign the contract’. So I phoned my agent on the way up to Leicester and I’m like, ‘Have you spoken to anyone else, have you spoken to Leicester, I heard they might be keen?’ ‘Yeah, I spoke to them, they’re not keen on you at all’.

“At that point, I basically told him: ‘F*** you, you’re a liar, don’t ever talk to me ever again’. I did my own deal with Leicester at which point I needed a lawyer who turned out to be Duncan Sandlant, who was then my agent for 15 years. Rugby is a kind of very strange place in reality and when you are negotiating contracts you need someone who you can trust implicitly.

“As a player, you can’t trust many people in the world of rugby implicitly. It’s very few people you can (trust). I have seen players shafted left, right and centre. Now the one person in my career who I knew had my back and was doing the best for me was Duncan Sandlant at Esportif.

“Unbelievable agent. Didn’t give a f*** about annoying clubs when it came to contract negotiations. All he was ever doing was getting me the best deal that suited me at a club and putting me in a position where I needed to be for whatever part of my career I was at.

“He had my best interests at heart all the way through and I know a lot of the agents don’t do that. Players need agents but they need to get decent agents as there are those who don’t have the players’ best interests at heart.”

"I have dealt with agents on numerous occasions and said…"

– Exeter boss Rob Baxter has given his take on the latest standoff in Premiership rugby #GallagherPrem #Chiefs #EXEvWORhttps://t.co/abZYOz65Mn

— RugbyPass (@RugbyPass) October 9, 2021