Lions get egg on their face re Foley - Lowell Ullrich

[Lionheart]

Imagine what a gong show it would be if sports teams could prevent their rivals from signing a prospect based on an allegation of a verbal agreement!

But that is not true, it is much more than an allegation. rickie said on air when asked "Yes, I'm now a BC Lion"

[joe kapp22]

But I would contend that Wally could still have fought over who has the rights to Ricky as a football asset. I would contend that they may well have had his rights contractually.

That is where we disagree. The point I tried to make was that Wally could do nothing, and the Lions have no rights in respect of Foley without a signed contract.

You may be right that Wally could have tried harder to get Foley's signature on the dotted line. But who knows if even that would have made Foley honour his committment? At 3-7, Wally has better uses for his time than a legal peeing match with a pathologically indecisive man-child.

And now that he's an Argo, let me point out that Foley's beard is just creepy.

Exactly, there are bigger fish to fry, we still need a rush end, we still have a game this weekend.

I suspect this will fire the Defence up though, how could it not?

[Lionheart]

I suspect this will fire the Defence up though, how could it not?

This is a good point. I was thinking this morning that there must be one guy on the team feeling a bit queezy about this signing - Brett Johnson.

Do you think he may try and step it up a notch if in fact he's been resting on his status laurels a bit too much?

Just a thought.

[joe kapp22]

I suspect this will fire the Defence up though, how could it not?

This is a good point. I was thinking this morning that there must be one guy on the team feeling a bit queezy about this signing - Brett Johnson.

Do you think he may try and step it up a notch if in fact he's been resting on his status laurels a bit too much?

Just a thought.

Imho Brett Johnson has played "okay" the guy I had in mind is Keron Williams.

[Gary]

Has it occurred to anyone else that Foley might be a little... emotionally unstable? This is not normal behaviour by any stretch of the imagination. I don't buy the theory that he spoke to local media yesterday morning just to yank our chain and mess with Wally (but then, I think Oswald acted alone, so maybe I'm just naive...)

That has crossed my mind...different circumstances, but not too dissimilar from Duncan O'Mahony deciding last minute to not show up at Bomber's training camp and not telling anyone about it.

As for WCJ and the repeated comments about how Wally screwed the pooch on this one...c'mon now. He's been doing this for thirty years. This is the first time he's had a player pull a stunt like this. Thirty years of negotiating, agreeing to terms, and getting a contract signed. And all of a sudden you think he's forgotten how to go about this business? Not likely. Foley failed to live up to his commitment here. There may be nothing the Lions can do about it legally (I'll leave that conversation to those more qualified than I am), but ethically, I think Foley's very much in the wrong here. Unless he does turn out to be "unstable" in some capacity.

Gary, Foley agreed to terms. Wally obviously wanted him since he sent their agreement on to the league.

McAvoy says Foley said over and over that he wanted to come here. It's not like his arm was being twisted.

Wally did not close the deal. I am sure he regrets it.

Either go hard after him, taking care of all the necessary details, or let him go. Wally had the agreement, and then let Foley wiggle away, talk to your family, think it over. And then, with Foley about to talk to his family, Wally sends the deal on to the league office. I agree with Wally's own statement that they have egg on their faces.

But this about-face clearly caught the Lions off-guard, though one player was not surprised, suggesting Foley thought Buono was not aggressive enough with the free agent defensive end beyond making a financial offer.

I"t reinforces what I’ve always said; don’t make announcements until the player is here and if this wasn’t a high-profile situation it never would have been an issue.

“We’re all slightly embarrassed but maybe we all learn a valuable lesson and the outside world sees how exposed we are about everything. This should never have been public." - Wally Buono

[Blue In BC]

Just to clarify - - a verbal agreement is never ever a legally binding contract. Not in sports, not in real life. That's the first thing you learn in the most basic high school law class.

.

A verbal agreement is a legal contract. It can be difficult to prove in some cases but it is nevertheless legal.

Since Foley announced on the news that he had signed with the Lions, I'd say it would be fairly easy to prove.

The CFL should negate the Argo contract.

Part of signing a contract is that you have " the legal capacity " to sign a contract. Foley had a legal agreement with Lions and therefore was not free to sign a new deal with the Argos unless he came to an agreement with the Lions to cancel the agreement.

Doesn't sound like that's the case and the CFL should take an action.

[CatsEyes]

My final words on the subject is something you should always remember and never forget:

[kamfan]

I am sure it is just a coincidence, but I wonder if the owner David Braley had a hand in this at all?

[Gary]

From everything I've seen and heard about this situation (including the great article by Jim Mullin at cfl.ca), I think the Lions are better off letting Ricky go. He's obviously a bit confused and a bit flaky. Better off without having that sort of player around. Don't get me wrong, he's a good player, especially when it comes to the ratio...but's he's obviously a bit of a head case.

[WestCoastJoe]

http://www.vancouversun.com/sports/foot ... story.html

Beamish ...

"I thought he was supposed to be here today?" Brent Johnson chuckled after practice Wednesday. "I think Rick missed his plane. Maybe he's coming on a red eye."

"When it comes down to it, it's probably our fault [the team] for assuming he was coming," Johnson said. "It goes both ways."

"I don't even know if it's about the best deal," Johnson says. "In Rick's case, he wanted to go somewhere else. He signed nothing. He's free to do what he wants. In professional sports, teams seldom hold to their deals. And players seldom hold to their deals. It's business. It is unscrupulous [what Foley did] but it doesn't matter. Teams, at times, can be unscrupulous. It was the player this time. Sports moves on. It doesn't matter. It really doesn't matter."

"The fact that a player changes his mind is the risk we all take," Buono adds. "But the risk the media takes is reporting it as fact. Don't point the finger. Don't come crying to me. When a player changes his mind, that's his right. The guys you [football media] should be apologizing to are the fans, who are in the innocents in all this. The people, unfortunately, who were misled and misinformed by us [Lions] and you [media] were the fans. Why would this reflect bad on anybody? Do you think this is the first time a player has changed his mind? Unfortunately, this occurs. That's why we try to be careful on the information we put out there. This time — you know what, guys? — we got caught."

"I told him to come here," Hunt said. "It was kind of a crazy situation, really. He didn't know what to do. In the end, he did what he needed to do."

"A reflection on his character?" I don't take it that personal," adds defensive back Ryan Phillips. "People got to do what's best for them and their family. Besides, players get burned every day. I don't hold a grudge with Ricky Foley, nah. He's not here, I wish him success, let's move on."

[B.C.FAN]

For what it's worth, Foley tells his side of the story in a Q and A with Mark Masters of the National Post. He credits Wally for the way he reacted to the news, and gushed about how the Argo organization treated his dad so well when the two of them dropped in on the Argo practice facility on the way to the airport.

Question: Were you on the way to the airport on Tuesday morning when you changed your mind?
RF: My bags were in the car and I had things planned out. My agent had mentioned [that maybe I should go visit the Argos] because it was like fear of the unknown [preventing me from signing with them], I’m not scared to admit that, that’s what it was. I guess I should have done better research. I know that now. I went up to the facility and talked to the guys and talked about the defence and what they expected from me and the role they wanted me to fill and once I became comfortable with what they expected from me and what my role would be I was kind of like, now what is it? Now what is holding me back from staying home.

Question: Who was it at the Argos who helped convince you?
RF: That was the thing, it was everyone, all the coaches were there and my dad was really impressed with the way they talked to him and the way they handled it and my dad couldn’t get over the fact at how they were so nice to him, treating him well and the attitudes of the coaching staff and we ran into a bunch of players. I didn’t realize how many guys I knew on this team and I didn’t realize how close you become in four years of playing against each other all the time and, yeah, it felt real comfortable yesterday.

Foley tells his side of the story

[Solar Max]

The Lions came out of this looking first rate, imo.

I still think that given Ricky's eccentricities, this is addition by subtraction for the Lions.

If at the age of 28, he is so attached to his dad, how could he play here for 4 years, and how on Earth was he supposed to play in Seattle had he caught on the PR there?

This is a very immature person, imo. Look, ooo, shiny.

[Lionheart]

He's a complete and utter flake.