Red’s Corner is a weekly column by Paul "ReDeYe" Chaloner released every Thursday exclusively at Cadred.

Paul's last three columns can be read by clicking the following links:

A bit earlier than usual, silly season is seriously upon us. Yes, it’s that time of year where players make huge leaps of faith and join a new team, seemingly all at the same time. Even the 2008 World Champions have been at it this year and several teams now look very different than they did a few weeks ago. There are still a few teams that haven’t announced new line ups and a few line ups kicking about out there who haven’t found a new home yet either.

One of the things most of us won’t hear or see however is what goes on in the background. In essence, how some (or nearly all in fact) of these deals come about in the first place and just what kind of process is involved. Before getting involved, I genuinely thought teams were perfectly civil, honourable and professional when it came to approaching players for their new line up, but my naivety left me many years ago after a bitter experience which saw my successful Unreal Tournament team torn apart by nothing more than greed.

With silly season in full swing it won’t surprise you to know that TCM was also in the mix of it all, indeed, contributing to some of the changes you may not be aware of. We had to make some changes coming out of the Gadget Show Live and whilst I was loathed to make wholesale changes, I had conceded they were required for the team to move forward. After some discussions, we were going ahead with a new line up including Jack and Henry from 4K and retaining HudzG, stingeR and Angeldust. At this point however, I hadn’t spoken to 4K, but was assured it wasn’t a big deal as neither Jack nor Henry were under contract. Even so, I was keen to ensure we didn’t destroy another team by the actions we were about to take, thus I gave the guys a deadline of Tuesday morning to get it sorted 100% so that we could at the very least allow 4K the chance and time to get replacements for LAN79.

This man knows exactly what its like to lose players

By Monday, things had changed and we were looking at a new 5th in place of stingeR and this would be another UK based player. At this point, Angeldust, rightly pointed out that he would prefer to play in a part Scandinavian based team, not a full UK team and decided his destiny lay elsewhere. This meant we needed a new 5th, again. At this point, I stepped down from TCM as the merry-go-round had become too much to cope with and the heart of the team had been ripped away. I won’t go in to the who did what and to whom, but lets just say, all was not well inside the team and it self imploded. There was little any of us could do and it’s a sad end to a nice team.

This left things up in the air and Henry decided to remove any doubt by joining Crack Clan. This left the other guys a little in limbo, between 4K and TCM and presumably, they will end up at one or the other in due course.

In between all of this, I was contacted by one of the 4K managers, someone Id never previously heard of or dealt with who treated me as if id just sold my own mother and accused me of a number of atrocities against 4Kings. I was being blamed for bringing the team to its knee’s, but without many of the facts. That said, it was true, I hadn’t spoken to the management at 4K about either player. At the time I felt I didn’t have to, why should I? Neither was contracted and both players had demonstrated clearly to me that they wished to play with George at TCM.

In hindsight, I view the decision I took not to talk to them as an error of judgement on my part. At the very least it would have been courteous and respectful towards the team to have spent 5 minutes discussing it. There was, after all, little they could have done about the transfer anyway. What cost to spend 5 minutes explaining what was going on?

As it turns out, things might just be better for 4K anyway, but that’s besides the point, I realise now that I should have done things differently, especially considering that I had the same thing happen to me many years ago and knew exactly how it felt.

Silly season continues and it seems it’s not restricted to Counter Strike Source either. In Halo 3, Infused Gaming ripped up the best that Europe had to offer at i36, including major teams from LLL, SK Gaming and many others. To say they were hot property after the event would be an understatement. It would seem, most of the teams in Europe were after them and knowing it was unlikely that they were under contract at Infused Gaming and even less likely to be getting any form of salary, the vulture lunch seemed set to begin.

Infused through and through or perhaps just an excuse to get a Farley pic in, you decide.

In the end, a top team stepped forward to pick them up and despite not actually going through the Infused management, Nick at Infused was more than happy to see them picked up as he would admit himself he wasn’t in a position to offer them what they truly deserved in any case. “Good luck to them and **” he said when I caught up with him just after the move. “It was nice to win an event, but I can’t afford their demands and I am happy to see them go on good terms”.

As it turned out, two of the team were contracted, though to his credit, Nick didn’t enforce them and it could be argued, it would have been foolish to do so in any case as no one would win, least of all Infused. Should the team who took the Halo 3 team have approached Nick directly instead of going through the players? Arguably yes they should have. Did they have to because of contracts? Probably not, but that doesn’t make it right.

A little while after, Nick had another potential player problem. This time it involved his star FIFA player who has been showing great form in UKeSA and has attracted the attentions of other clans. Nick was upset because he felt Crack Clan had made a direct approach to the player and he approached me to ask for advice. Initially it appeared that Crack were indeed in the wrong, but on closer inspection, a little digging and some discussions with Crack management, it seems to be a simple case of crossed wires or at worst, a misinterpretation of a log.

In essence, Crack had done nothing more than talk to the player and ask his Contract situation. As soon as they were told by the player that he was under contract to Infused, Crack backed away from the player, made no formal offer and did not pursue it any further. You could argue (and I did) that Crack should have gone directly to the Infused management. Ben Woodward was kind enough to offer his side of things. “Asking if a player is contracted and making an offer are two different things entirely. Had I made an offer regardless of his contractual obligations to Infused then there would be cause for concern among the Infused management, this however did not happen”.

So as it turned out, this wasn’t so much of an issue as perhaps was first assumed, but still it leaves some interesting questions.

Did Crack do anything wrong with this approach? Little really and certainly they broke no laws or breached his contract directly. They simply wanted to find out his contractual situation and once they did, chased it no further. I can see Infused side of this too however, having just lost one team (and not the first either) and seeing another player approached, it would be easy to assume they were being screwed over (again).

It seems nice guys like Nick and Mike (at TLR) are often on the wrong end of the deals, perhaps being nice doesn’t pay. They could start by contracting players better or at least contracting them at all, which both teams started to do in recent months.

Nick has, to his credit, always remained friendly, responsible and professional in all of the dealings I have had with him and others have spoken to me about. In fact, I haven’t heard a bad word about Nick since he came in to the scene. His team continue to be perennial underdogs with a promise of producing upcoming talent and that hasn’t changed, just witness the Halo team as a good example of where a team like Infused will take a risk that perhaps the top teams wont (until they prove themselves like i36 of course).

There is little wrong with this either, its still going on, over 120 years after the football league was formed and will still be going, long after us lot have left this world. What is different however is the lack of a governing body and a set of rules or a code of conduct that governs transactions? Nowhere is it written that managers of teams should approach the management of other teams when they would like to pick up a player or a team from them. It should go without saying as being the honourable and professional thing to do, but who are we kidding?

Not all that long ago, the G7 issued a statement advising teams that they would do exactly this, but a few weeks later, TLR were on their way to MYM (a G7 team at the time) without having so much as emailed their owner and manager Michael Robinson. It’s plain to me that we can’t trust the teams or the managers of those teams to abide by a voluntary code set up by a few elite teams. It is obvious to me that despite good intentions from everyone involved, its time for someone to hold the teams accountable for their actions, particularly regarding player transfers. Some, but only a few I suspect, would argue that we have a governing body in UKeSA, but I haven’t seen any legislation to tackle this problem from them either, yet.

Another manager (xman) suffering from losing players, this time to RealLife™

You could argue that this is simply capitalism at play and the world we live in. Not much argument from me on that score, I just wish those who take risks on players or teams lower down the pecking order were rewarded in some way for that risk, rather than simply losing out on players when a bigger team come knocking. After all, it’s great a player gets another chance, potentially a paid chance to play videogames for a bigger team. It’s just how it happens across football now, but they have transfer fees and a governing body to make sure things like illegal approaches don’t happen or are punished if they do.

Right now, without any of the ideas here being implemented or seemingly about to be adopted by a governing body which isn’t recognised by a large part of the gaming scene the teams and managers and players are all out there on their own with only a sense of honour and professionalism to stop them from poaching more players. One manager made a great point to me about all of this. He said his team were saving some players from ridiculous contracts which stopped them being paid or in some cases where contracts where being breached by the team, failing to pay the salary promised or taking months or even years before paying out prize money and in some case never paying it at all. As far as he was concerned, even contracted players were fair game if the team they were contracted to were in breach of their contract.

A fair point and I would certainly side with the players being treated better before I cared about any team, but that doesn’t make it ok to poach players directly and ignore contracts in place, regardless of whether they are being kept or not. Teams should still be going directly to the management of the other team before the player. Ultimately if a player is really unhappy and the contract is being breached, they have the power to null and void it anyway and join whoever they want, but that’s not for another team to deal with.

I was also told by a manager I respect a great deal and who has a vast amount of eSport management experience that most, if not all managers had poached players at some point in their careers, including the person who told me this. I agreed with him and frankly, any manager who says differently is a liar. That doesn’t help us right now though and ultimately, every manager out there should be looking to help make this a far more professional scene by acting properly and professionally. I had argued with a colleague that this was even more important when contracts were involved, but he argued that it shouldn’t matter, it’s about a principle and an etiquette that has been missing across the board. In hindsight, I agree, it shouldn’t matter.

Solution? I don’t have one right now and nor does eSport, but it wouldn’t hurt UKeSA to look at some form of code of conduct when it comes to UK teams conducting themselves properly when it comes to transfers. That would at least be a small start.