It is reported in today's Herald that both Leigh Hinton and Rida Jahouer have reneged on the deals they had signed with Glasgow and will not be playing here next season.
Hinton is reported to have signed for Newport Gwent Dragons, while Jahouer is staying in France.

Glasgow believed that both players had agreed contracts, but they have now backed out of their deals.

Although it's the latest example of SRU administrators failing to get the final paperwork done on deals made by pro team coaches, Glasgow coach Hugh Campbell places the blame at the door of the players and their agents. "What concerns me most is a lack of business integrity and personal integrity," he said.

In both cases the players had signed heads of agreement which the Glasgow coach believed to be binding. However the SRU is currently re-drafting its terms and conditions - largely at the behest of agents who had found the previous ones overly complicated - and consequently the final contracts were not signed.

There seems to be little that Glasgow can do about the situation. "They're looking at the legal situation but the feedback we're getting from lawyers isn't very positive," said Hugh.

"It's getting to the stage where employment law is giving no protection to the employer and loads of protection to the employee. It seems that some agents are making commitments and then using that as a tool to get better deals elsewhere.

"We've probably had five players in all who have fitted into that category, three of them having agreed verbally, but these two had signed heads of agreement."

Glasgow are now looking at alternatives - Hugh Campbell says. "The market is not what it was, but we can for example look at rugby league players, because their season is different from ours. I'm still happy with the squad we've got - we have quality players - but we can't go into the season with only three back-three players."

This article was posted on 2-Jul-2005, 20:02 by Hugh Barrow.