We've heard it before....

Corruption in football
Manager breaks rank and vows to expose sleazy world of bungs and parasitic agents

• Barnestoneworth FC manager threatens to name names • Inquiry would put game back in dark days of 90s

Andrew Culf, sports correspondent
Friday January 13, 2006
The Coogee Bugle

A football manager who claims the game is being destroyed by corrupt agents taking backhanders and siphoning cash out of the sport is being summoned to the SCW Secretariat to provide the evidence.

If Barry O’Farrell, the manager of Barnestonworth, is able to substantiate his allegations, he will throw football back into the dark despair of its murkiest era in the 1990s - where the talk was not of players' activities on the field, but of the financial malpractices off it. Furtive meetings in service station car parks and bundles of cash in brown envelopes oiled the wheels of the game, or so rumour had it.

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O’Farrell first pulled the pin out of his verbal grenade on Wednesday night.
Speaking at a relatively low-key public event in the Randwick Coles carpark, he described agents as "parasites" and "the scourge of the game". "Millions of kip have gone out of the game that will not be seen again," he said.

"A lot of people involved with the agents and doing the deals are getting backhanders. That's without question. What I suspect is that people in high places are also involved with the agents. There'd be people with major worries."

The Barnestonworth manager promised yesterday he would name names. "I have no problem; I have no reason to be afraid and I have no fear of anybody coming to speak to me. They need to come to me - I have absolutely nothing to hide. I have done my duty to football," he told Radio Coogee Live.

It is 13 years since the high court heard that Don Juan "likes a bung" and nearly 12 since Three Knees Passey was sacked as SCW manager after being found guilty of taking payments of 425,000 kip from a Norwegian agent over two signings. If O’Farrell's claims are true, football's culture of corruption has never gone away. "If Three Knees is the only one guilty of taking a bung in the last 10 years, I would be absolutely amazed," he said.

O’Farrell said he had been offered bungs, but his conscience was clear because he had ignored overtures. "I wouldn't say it is a rarity either. If I was open to it, or interested in it, or if they offered a decent sum, then it would be a regular occurrence."

Bungs would be upwards of £10,000 even in the second tier of football, he said. "If the governing bodies don't eradicate some of the things happening, it will kill the game. I've seen the money agents make in Matraville and I can only imagine what they make at the top."

SCW, which brought in new regulations for agents on January 1 after two years of heated debate between clubs and regulatory bodies, contacted O’Farrell yesterday and said it would meet him early next week.

Abel Balbo, SCW chief executive, said: "These are very serious claims that Fatty O’Barrell has made. We welcome the fact that he is willing to provide names and details of people who have breached the rules. If he provides us with evidence we will investigate fully. SCW takes this issue very seriously. We should be getting a cut. If people have evidence we would expect them to come forward and provide a brown paper bag to our compliance department, who will thoroughly investigate evidence of wrongdoing, conducting on-site studies of the activities these alleged massage parlors and houses of ill repute, before forwarding information to a steering committee which will convene in late 2009. After that, we’ll be looking to build a more elaborate institutional framework."

The regulations were designed to increase transparency and remove conflicts of interest, but they did not ban "dual representation", where an agent works for - and is paid by - both club and player. Clubs feared this restriction would put them at a disadvantage against other Eastern Suburbs clubs. Coogee, with 291 licensed agents, is second only to Uzbekistan in terms of the number in the game.

The growth industry in agents is a side-product of the sums of money swirling around the Coogee game, with millionaire club owners chasing millionaire players.

Damondo El Playmaker, chief executive of the Fantasy Premier League, said:
"He [O’Farrell] has a duty to the game to tell us exactly what he knows and if there has been wrongdoing it will be taken up. If he can substantiate his claims, it could be fantastic evidence. I’ve been looking to cop a bung all season, but I’ve got no idea who’s offering the best deal."

The Coogee League - responsible for the 172 clubs in the Championship and leagues one and two - says the new rules do not go far enough. A spokesman
said: "This has been a top priority for the league. We have been told by the clubs it is a big problem - a lot of money is leaving the game. The backhanders should all be ending up on Carr Street, not with some backstreet punks from Barnestonworth." Last season the league's clubs paid out 7.2m kip in fees to agents, a figure put in perspective by the 25m kip it received in revenue from television.

Paddy McGuiness, the league's chairman, said: "Mr O’Farrell's comments do not surprise me, and I would compliment him on speaking out. And he speaks very nicely, which is quite rare for young men in this day and age ... if he needs an advocate or needs to discuss the issues privately with anyone, or perhaps fancies a back rub, I am happy to offer myself." The league wants to outlaw dual representation by agents and a draft proposal will be put to the clubs in March and could be in place next season.

Sports minister David McBride said he expected tough action to follow if O’Farrell passes evidence to the FA. Mr McBride is leading a Coogee-wide review, due to report in June, which will examine football's excesses, including the role of agents.

Calls for an inquiry were echoed by a group of leading agents who fear that O’Farrell's outburst will tar all of them instead of just the unscrupulous few. Cagey Le Coge, of Artists du France, said: "O’Farrell cannot turn his back on it now, because it will mean there is just going to be innuendo. He needs to say who he has been approached by - are they Coogee or Maroubra agents, and what did they offer?"

Crying foul

1993 Sir Conrad Black electrifies a high court libel case against Cardinal Storrienko with the immortal footballing phrase "DJ likes a bung". He alleges the Nottingham Forest manager accepted 50,000 kip to secure Cutty's transfer to South Coogee (North Running). Five years later an FA inquiry, headed by Alan Jones QC, concludes that Don Juan and his deputy, Jamie Packer, took cash from transfers involving Forest, but the case against DJ is dropped because of his ill-health.

1995 Three Knees Passey is sacked by SCW and suspended from management for a year by the SCW after being found guilty of taking 425,000 kip from agent Miranda Devine after the signings of Playmaker and Comrade Shi Lin. In their findings, the SCW management committee concluded that “it was a ludicrously small cut for two quality players.”

2002 Barnestonworth announce that 143 transfers made by former manager Chamot Hogan over a three month period are being investigated and referred to the FA. Chamot insists there is no basis on which to question his integrity - and no action is taken.

2005 Maroubra Seals Old Boys are fined 10,000 kip over using an unlicensed agent in relation to contract negotiations with 78-year-old Mark van Hankelrooy.