Today, Boreham Wood Football Club have decided after speaking with our solicitors, to update our staff, fans and the football public, following your emails, phone calls, tweets and messages of support in regards to our #FootballMustWin campaign that began back in July.

To give you a quick overview of what’s been going on; well, we decided after the intermediary Dominic Yarwood’s incredibly poor behaviour, to seek a meeting with his employer Elite Management (the agency), to put forward our position. Which was basically that we wanted some sort of explanation for their young intermediary’s behaviour, we wanted a public apology, and wanted no more than £200 towards our costs – hardly earth shattering – but we never even got a response at the time.

We have since the outset of dealing with this intermediary, been abused, intimidated and had his childish accusations levied at us, including a ridiculous email claiming breach of contract, that of course proved to be bogus, untrue and unfounded.

So, we have pushed on with Elite Management, insisting on a public apology, as a point of principle, as we feel we could not allow intermediaries or agents at our level to ride roughshod over our club and our young players.

Because we have made this stand based on principle, things have now moved on and we are now heavily embroiled in litigation against the intermediary Dominic Yarwood, the agent, and Elite Management.

By standing our ground, we are now being bombarded with their solicitors’ letters, threats and legal speak so crazy, so intimidating, and so threatening, that it would take far too long to go into detail here.

That said, we have decided to carry on, as we still refuse to be bullied. We feel this #FootballMustWin campaign is now too important to lose. We believe these agent’s threats are yet another bullying strategy from an agency, that did not control its intermediary, in the hope that we will go away.

They must understand our small football club took a stand way back in July, for all clubs and for all players at our level and we are not going away. As a club, we promised that once we started down a legal path, that we would pursue our grievance and highlight this case to the governing bodies.

The integrity of football and the power of our governing bodies in regards to intermediaries is now being questioned. We believe we now need #FootballMustWin to bring these intermediaries like Dominic Yarwood and certain agents to account, as they cannot be above the rules of football and the English FA.

Our club, our manager, our chairman, and the treatment of our former young contracted player, who was advised so badly – needs to be addressed – as it’s time for licenses to be revoked if people simply encourage players to break contracts – for their own financial gain.

We have kept our legal promise (it’s not cheap) and we have also been in touch and sent our case to date to both the FA and the National League board. 

We have throughout been totally transparent with the football world and in truth we have never understood, why we received the threats and the childish accusations from an out of control intermediary? Our crime it seems, was to have a player on an agreed well-paid contract. A player we looked after, a player we supported and a player we always paid on time, while doing nothing but supporting his ambition.

Our other crime, was to have a watertight contract, that correctly protected the club from letting a player leave on the cheap. This obviously angered Mr Yarwood, who wanted to force through a sale at any cost, during a summer transfer window that was fast running out…

As such, we were abused and bullied in his angry tirade, in the hope we would succumb to his multiple threats. We are still amazed at the vitriolic language we encountered and the complete lack of empathy from both the agent and agency who still employ this young intermediary.

We feel they now want to intimidate us further with their recent long winded legal letters. We believe their stance is simply, that they are a rich football agency who want to bully a small football club to bow to its wants.

As such, we feel we need to remind the football public at large, just exactly what this intermediary’s behaviour has led to, just in case the people who have supported our #FootballMustWin campaign have forgotten the detail:

1) The intermediary threatened our manager, in the presence of our assistant manager, in his first phone call to us on World Cup Final day, after introducing himself as the players’ new representative. He made it clear that he had the player’s contract in front of him and if we didn’t comply with his demands, he would create a whole load of trouble – and in truth – he’s been true to his word. 

2) We made it clear, we would not bow to this intimidation, no matter what the intermediary’s threats, and we would only sell the contracted player on the terms as outlined in his contract and not the figures that the intermediary was touting. That despite the intermediary threatening us with the FA, the PFA and that he would create a huge problem for the club, our Manager and our Chairman.

In his words: “I’ll get the player out on a free, I’ve done it recently with another player, and he walked on a breach of contract.”

3) Dominic Yarwood ignored the fact that the player was on a signed lodged contract, and he openly touted the player, along with the wrong buyout details to every club he spoke with. He refused to accept that we had a detailed signed contract written by the FA registrations department and no matter how much we explained the player’s contract and buy-out clauses, he simply wouldn’t listen. 

4) The intermediary seemingly got more and more irate, when our chairman and manager quite rightly after his behaviour, refused to deal with this flat track bully.

We even have two signed statements from our former player, stating that the intermediary actually advised and instructed him to break his contract, to down tools at our summer training camp and to not play in our official pre-season game in Barnstaple.

To the player’s credit, he declined to do that and if he had, it was a clear breach of a logged FA contract.

5) The intermediary at this time, decided to further escalate things, by personally logging into the player’s laptop, while the player was in Barnstaple and the intermediary was in London.

Dominic Yarwood wrote a completely fabricated ‘breach of contract’ email on behalf of the player and then sent it from the player’s email address. That email was sent to the PFA, the FA, the football club and the National League on the player’s behalf – citing BWFC contract breaches that were proven to be untrue and did not exist.

6) All of this was nothing more than a nasty bullying tactic, designed to unsettle the club and force through a move during a summer transfer window, that was fast coming to an end. It was pure intimidation to ensure that Dominic Yarwood got his own way. He was determined at all costs, no matter what the disruption to a small football club, to ensure that both he and the agency who employ him would receive a fee. 

7) Our crime as we’ve said, was to stand up for ourselves and make the intermediary’s behaviour public. We did this only after looking at all aspects of this intermediary’s threats and the ridiculous breach of contract email that he concocted and had sent.

Each of the governing bodies, namely the FA, the PFA and the National League, have all looked at this Dominic Yarwood’s accusation, and all then informed both the player and the intermediary, that the player’s contract was written one hundred percent correctly, and that the club were one hundred percent correct in their reading of the contract. In truth, the club’s behaviour was throughout, one hundred percent above reproach – we had done absolutely nothing wrong.

8) We believe our former player then thought long and hard about this intermediary’s behaviour, and did absolutely the right thing. When he wrote an honest and heartfelt apology to our fans, Manager, Chairman and our football club.

We also believe the player without question, had the grounds to terminate his contract with this young intermediary and this agency. He was given incredibly bad advice, was advised to pull out of a pre-season friendly, which was a clear breach of his contract, he was further implicated in a bogus breach of contract claim against BWFC, that was written by the intermediary Dominic Yarwood, and he had only been with this agency for two or three weeks. 

9) For clarity, the player’s subsequent move to Walsall, came about completely out of the blue. Our Chairman received a direct phone call from Walsall Secretary Dan Mole. We’re told it was a simple conversation, where Mr Mole asked: “If there was a deal to be done,” and the Chairman replied: “Yes, if you can meet the buy out clauses and the add ons we want.” The deal we’re then told was all agreed in around two days and the player signed for Walsall with no fuss.

10) This intermediary, agent and his agency, now it seems want to bully the player into giving them monies for a deal that they had absolutely no part of, and as such do not deserve one penny.

Our Chairman is expecting to have to deal with this agency’s very expensive lawyers. He’s expecting they’ll continue to try and bully him, our club, our manager and our former young player – who we feel strongly should be allowed to play and concentrate on his football.

As such, we will send our case, including our many witness statements and our solicitor’s thoughts, to the FA, the PFA and the National League board, as this is a case #FootballMustWin and we need to ensure that young players are protected from these people.

Our position is down to a young bullying intermediary, who now continues with his threats through his agency’s expensive lawyers. Our club feels that for the good of football and for the ongoing governance of all intermediaries, that we must have our day in court. We believe our case is strong and we believe we have right on our side.

For everyone’s information, the agent and intermediary, are we believe claiming that they have endured damages and losses from this situation up until now of approximately £250,000. This is a case that for us is not about money, it’s about true FA governance. As such, we are taking it hugely seriously, and are running the risk of running up a huge legal bill to fight against the behaviour of this very big agency.

We must stand up for the little guy against this intimidation from a group in football who only ever take out and never put anything back into the game. So, if that means we need to go through the civil courts to seek justice for ourselves, for football, and to highlight the perils that young players are having to deal with – then so be it… 

If you agree with us, please spread this article and links, to show your support for our campaign, by tweeting #FootballMustWin… This is a hugely important case for football clubs and players at our level, and we must get the governing bodies dealing quickly with ungoverned intermediaries, as these agencies are clearly not taking ownership of the damage that’s being done.

For those of you who were unaware of what our #FootballMustWin campaign was about back in the summer, the links and information are set out below:

https://www.borehamwoodfootballclub.co.uk/uncategorized/agents-wont-hold-us-to-ransom-2/

https://www.borehamwoodfootballclub.co.uk/uncategorized/football-must-win-this-one/

https://www.borehamwoodfootballclub.co.uk/uncategorized/footballmustwin/

https://www.borehamwoodfootballclub.co.uk/uncategorized/player-statement-morgan-ferrier/

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