Eels Blogs

A fish called Cam

In 2008 Cameron Smith was a big fish in the NRL.

In fact at 25, he was verging on “whale” status, having captained the Storm, Queensland and Australia; won a Dally M Medal, a Wally Lewis medal, and won a Grand Final (let’s not go there…..breathe….breathe).

Smith was looking at a big new deal with the Storm and was thinking of parting ways with his long term manager Jim Banaghan

When the whispers of a split leaked out to the player manager ranks it kicked off a feeding frenzy of interest.

Two Parra old boys

12 years earlier, a kid called Isaac Moses was leaving Parramatta Marist Brothers to start working at Stadium Australia in the Memberships Department, and then after the Sydney Olympics ended he worked in the Event and Operations for non-other than “teflon” Toddy Greenberg.

Whilst working at Stadium Australia, Moses was playing in the Metropolitan Cup for Guildford where he met retired Illawarra & Parramatta fullback David Riolo

Riolo was building his Sports Management company (Titan Sports Management) which he had a 50/50 partnership with Warren Craig, Riolo’s former manager.

Moses knew he was destined for bigger and better things and so he begged Riolo to give him a job at Titan. Eventually Riolo and Craig agreed and gave Moses a part time commission only gig.

Moses finds his whale

OK, back to 2008……one of the first agents to reach out to Smith was Isaac Moses who was known only for having the weirdest name in the industry – but he was hungry as fu%$, young and hugely ambitious to make his mark and make it quick.

Just about every player agent was flying to Melbourne to pitch to Cameron Smith but in the end it was Isaac Moses who got his man…or whale…or weird whale/man creature…you get the picture..

Snaring Smith saw Moses’ stature in the industry soar, and in 2011 Moses demanded he got a piece of the Titan Management pie and negotiated to buy a 20% stake in the company for $600,000.   

Moses would spend more than a decade with Titan and along with Riolo they pulled off some of the biggest and highest profile deals in Australian sport including the Israel Folau switch to the ARU and Karmichael Hunt switch to AFL.

Walkouts & whispers   

After a couple of years of more success Moses was eyeing off his next big move…..his own agency. His only problem was he still owed Riolo and Craig about $100,000 and couldn’t get out unless he had paid the debt.

So he did what any reasonable person would do, turn to a property developer to pay out his debt. 

Moses had formed a friendship with Joe Wehbe, who had become something of a mentor to Moses and other NRL players ….ring a bell?

And he did what anyone would do when dealing with a property developer, he did a handshake agreement with Wehbe to repay Moses’s debt & in return to be a silent partner in a new sports management partnership called Cove Agency and get access to NRL player clients so he could continue to build his own reputation as…”The Football Whisperer”.

Wehb’s reputation as a mind guru was growing and he had the ear of some of the biggest stars in the NRL…James Tedesco, Daly Cherry-Evans and even that great club stalwart at Cumberland Tim Mannah.

You’ve been Cove’d

For the next decade Moses was the front man for the biggest player manager company in the NRL market.

At it’s height Cove Agency had over 50 high profile NRL players and coaches on it’s book, how’s this for a client list….Cameron Smith, Adam O’Brien, David Klemmer, Tevita Pangai Junior, Mitchell Moses. Matt Lodge,  Josh Hodgson, Felise Kaufusi, Jordan McLean. Kotoni Staggs, John Bateman, Josh Hodgson,  Aaron Woods, Jessy and Kenny Bromwich, Kodi Nikorima, Kyle Feldt, Josh McGuire,  Michael Jennings, Kevin Walters, Anthony Siebold and Luke Brooks and that’s not even half.

In the background, Wehbe was quietly building his own following and soon he had an almost cult like following within some clubs.

You might remember the chat about the Wests Tigers in 2017.

The Tigers had their four best players at the time, Mitch Moses, Luke Brooks, Aaron Woods and James Tedesco all coming off contract at the same time…. all managed by Moses…. and three of them mentored by Wehbe.

As a side note – people wonder why the Tigers have been a basket case for years, which club allows themselves to be in this position…then makes the call to let them all go but keep Luke Brooks…..talk about a domino of bad judgement.

After the ordeal was over, one Tigers official described their position this way, “We felt like we were hostages,”

Cove had a big handful of black and orange short’n’curlys and weren’t about to let go. In the end the Tigers had to let 3 of the ”Big 4” go, what made matters worse was that in the background the same players were taking advice from Wehbe about where to sign – the Tigers were so desperate that at one stage they were negotiating with Wehbe to take up a role  at the club in an attempt to win favour and keep all 4 players.

Let’s just say it didn’t work out – Jason Taylor lost his job as Head Coach and you can well argue that the Tigers have never recovered.

Blue & Gold turns brown

In 2016 Parramatta were docked 12 competition points and fined $1 million for breaches of the salary cap dating back to 2013. What preceded that is pretty interesting.

5 years earlier, Peter Nolan was hired to lead Parramatta’s player recruitment and development and by that stage had formed a strong relationship with Isaac Moses.

At the time of Nolan’s tenure at Parramatta, our roster became over represented by Cove and it wasn’t long before this spelt trouble for an inexperience Football Department and hapless Board.

Once those pesky board meeting tapes and hard drives found their way to the NRL Integrity Unit hings started turning pretty sour for Isaac Moses.

It was that heroic bustling former club captain Tim Manner who eventually handed the NRLUI the bullet they needed to take down a heavy weight player agent.

Tim was working at the club and was very close to Wehbe, but like some of his later games in the NRL Tim caved into the investiagtor's questionning and admitted that Moses had asked him to lie about what went on at Parramatta. It came out that Scott Seward (then CEO) and Jason Irvine admitted to the NRL that making cash payments to players by way of cash, either provided directly by suppliers or after paid into Irvine’s credit union account.

Seward also said Nolan was aware of most of the deals, and had told him not to worry as “people will help us out”.

Irvine said he had only personally paid $6000 in cash to one player, Nathan Peats, who had demanded the money and threatened he would quit playing if he did not receive it.....how prophetic.

Seward and Irvine also told the NRL during its investigations that by the end of the 2014 season, $589,000 was owed to players in unwritten deals.

The kind's dead, long live the king

The first player to walk out on Moses was James Tedesco who jumed ship in 2017 when the smell around Moses got worse following the NRLIU's initial investigation. 

The last chapter in this story is for me the funniest, Moses busines partner Joe Wehbe had been woring away on his own Plan B and when things finally fell apart between he and Moses under the heat of the investigation, Wehbe was there to swoop on the Cove's clients under the banner of his new Agency Ignite Sports Management which he set up with his brother Jon and Anthony Field

In what must be the saltiest of salts one could have in a wound, Ignite SM now have some of the biggest names in the NRL on their books (including both Origin captains and our own Nathan Brown).and most are former Cove clients

I hope you found this as interesting to read as I find it to write, something to distract us away from pre-game nerves tonight.

GO PARRA!!!!!