We are living in uncertain times at the moment. Club cricket was called off early in Australia impacting many teams chances of winning a flag. And, in the UK, we have not seen any cricket of any form for the entire season.
So the question is, with all of this uncertainty and with overseas travel pretty much shut down, should your club be looking to recruit an overseas player?
Here are our tips to navigate this awkward situation:
Have the conversation with players
Who knows what is going to happen. By the time the Aussie and NZ seasons start borders may be opened. The last thing you want to be is on the backfoot when it comes to recruitment.
Be honest and upfront
Be honest with any player that you are chatting to. Nobody knows what is going to happen. If borders don’t open, then you do not want them to be disappointed because you have promised them something that you can not deliver on. Players will respect you and the club for being upfront putting you in good stead for when overseas players will be welcome back.
Don’t book anything just yet
Money is going to be tight for clubs this upcoming season. Sponsorship dollars will be scarce making it harder to run clubs. The last thing you want to do is commit your club to a large sum of money and then lose it.
Using an agent? Pay on delivery
To be fair, we don’t see a point of using an agent, hence why we built this site. In a lot of cases (Hi Kenny and others) they tend to scout “their” players from our site.
Our biggest tip here is to pay on delivery. In other words, negotiate terms to pay when the player arrives and has been in the country for a certain period of time. Before COVID 19 we heard of too many cases of clubs paying for players and them not turning up, don’t get pressured into paying for something when you don’t know what might happen in the future.
Let us know your thoughts and any other tips that you may have.
Perfectly written!
And nailed everything. Thanks for this