Interview: manager contract lawyer Nick Humphreys

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1:04products are built to the highest quality. We put in the work so you can perfect yours, with purpose in every detail, and crafted with intention. Simblend, built on craft, visit Simblend.com to shop. What if you could have the most reliable Wi-Fi at the same price for five years? That's the Xfinity 5-Year Price Guarantee. No annual contracts, no hidden fees, and our best equipment included. Plus, get online in minutes with same-day Wi-Fi. Just five years of fiber-powered Wi-Fi that boosts speeds to the devices that need them most. Lock in your price and unlock the possibilities. Xfinity, imagine that. Select plans only restrictions apply powered by fiber connected to the premises by coaxial cable. Actual speeds vary. Hello, and welcome to the price of football, the show that looks at the money behind the beautiful game. With me, Liverpool University's Kiran Maguire, and no Kevin Day, because Kevin is currently

2:10in an anti-gravity tank, getting fixed, following his accident. Now you might be expecting this to be the questions and answers show, which Kevin and I did actually record over the course of the weekend, but then owing to what's referred into the traders' technical gremlins, something went disastrously wrong. So it's hiding somewhere in the internet ether. However, we did have a show scheduled today. It'd be awful. It'd be an awful lot of football club managers, dismissals and changes in this season. So we thought we talked to somebody who really knows what's happening, and we're absolutely delighted to be able to interview Nick Humphreys at the Employment and Sports Law with the law form Pennington's Manchester Cooper. Thanks so much for joining the price of football. How are you keeping? Yeah, good.

3:10Thanks. Uh, busy times at the moment. It's busy times. I can imagine. I can imagine. For people who don't know about you, can you sort of give us sort of an overview of how you've got into employment law and sports law in particular, and your football background as such? OK, so getting into law generally, I studied law at university, I then lectured law for a few years, qualified originally as barrister, and then cross-qualified and became a slister. And in terms of my experience with football, I used to work with Brilink, I called Mike Morrison and Mike ended up leaving the firm that we were at at the time, and going in-house League Management Association, and we kept in contact after Mike had left, and he very kindly asked

4:15me if I'd like to do some work for the other League Management Association, and I then got a series of cases back-to-back with, and this is sort of the point of time at which your claims started to start, and they've finished in the civil courts, so, whereas with now, we have all claims being dealt with by way of arbitration, so that was really it, that's going back, that's what over 10 years ago now, I started doing the magic claims, then other areas of sports have followed, so there's been tennis, Formula 1, and last year I did a big sports investigation in relation to it, rowing as well, so it's all things are welcome at my door, related sport. Amazing, amazing, and then you mentioned their resolution via arbitration, mentioning

5:22no names, but what would be sort of the standard process, because we hear that a manager is left, it's never described as sacked, it's always has left the club, and then there's normally a press release from the club, tends to be silence from the manager, is that part of the agreement, just sort of talk us through sort of the standard approach, where perhaps you get involved, who you get the call from, and so on. So what will typically happen with a manager term nation is that at the outset, the manager will either deal with the very excellent Lindsey Gordon at the League Management Association, so Lindsey is the, for those who don't know, she's the director of legal services at the LMA, and Lindsey and her team deal with the vast majority of manager term nations,

6:23so the other possibility is that the manager might have his own legal team, which is engaged by our agents, and so what will happen is that there will be discussions about the way in which the term nations will be dealt with, and as part and parcel of the discussions announcements will be made on both sides, which deal with the term nations, so that's fine. And the ones that don't settle, they end up going through, depending upon which League you're dealing with, either the Premier League Managers arbitration tribunal for Premier League Managers, or for managers lower down the divisions, they'll be dealt with under the FA Rule K arbitration scheme.

7:24And so what happens with both of them is that once once you get locked into the realms of arbitration, the first step will happen, it's that there'll be either a mediation or a round table discussion between the parties, so it's a mediation essentially shuttle diplomacy with the third party mediator involved, and the idea with that with mediation and the round table discussions is that you get to a consensus, and the general principle with mediators, if you have a speech from mediator, they'll tell you that all of mediations will result in a situation in which neither party is happy with the outcome, and that's the ideal bytepoint, however, not all cases are capable of resolution, and certainly

8:26with the Premier League Managers, you're looking at often very sizable termination payments, and one of the comments that has been made a number of times on the court is that what you're looking at is that each pound that is taken away from the first team squad is a pound wasted, and so what you're looking at, if you're the club, up to a point, and I'll come back to this point for a second, is that you're potentially trying to reduce the value of the settlement you're making, and just going back to the red line on that. What happens is that with all football manager contracts, there are a series of terms that have to be included in the contract, and unlike with football players where there

9:27is a standard form contract, and there is an aschedal attached, which is the piece that deals with the remuneration with manager contracts, that there is no standard form of contract, where each club will have its own contract, and sometimes clubs will have different contracts, different managers, but what they all have to have is certain specific terms, which must be included, and so this is under, who's in with the Premier League at any rate, what will happen is that under rule P8 of the Premier League handbook, so a yet further step back, the Premier League handbook is the, that's like the contract between the clubs and the Premier League, and that contract mandates that certain specific provisions have to be included into the contract of the manager, and those are that the manager will observe

10:36and comply with the rules and regulations for the time being of any organisation or body, which the club is bound to observe, including the FA and the English Premier League. Second, that the manager will comply with all reasonable instructions and requests given by the club and the EPL, and third, that any dispute between the management club is to be dealt with by the EPL's manager's authorization tribunal. What also happens is that there is both a manager code of conduct and a club code of conduct, which is dealt with under the rules, and the club code of conduct requires that the club has to strictly observe the terms of the manager's contract and promptly settle any termination obligations. So what will happen

11:38is that once you've got the point of arbitration, you are dealing with a situation in which the club has set you the manager in breach of contract, and what then happens is that we've got a discussion about damages, because otherwise the club is going to be in breach of the club code of conduct. So we're done by this stage mediation, we're now arbitrating, and so the question then is what does an arbitration look like? Well, arbitration is dealt with under another set of provisions under the Premier League handbook, which is rule Y, and that sets out the rules of arbitration for the manager's arbitration tribunal. And for once a better description, arbitration is essentially private binding dispute resolution as between parties. And so the private point is

12:39that you shouldn't know what comes out of the arbitration that you know enough people that do this sort of work, and you're obviously smiling. So what happens is it's not necessarily kind of cups of doors, but you hear the gossip as to what's gone on with arbitrations. And so you'll have this private binding resolution with arbitrators, so who are the arbitrators? The answer is that there are a bunch of experienced professionals who have involvement with their sports, so you're dealing with typically former high court judges, senior KC's, King's Council, you know, leading barristers who are expert in this sort of thing, and also accountants. And you know, people like yourself, perhaps, you know, perhaps perhaps you should

13:44be an arbitration killer. And what happens is that they're all on an approved list, which is run by the English Premier League. And what will then happen is that because you've got a written clause in the contract, which deals with arbitration occurring. It is arbitration purposes of the general rules of the arbitration system in the UK, which is the arbitration act 1996. And then the specific rules of the arbitration have had the procedure operates, you know, we're commencing proceedings disclosure, which states here and so on. Those those are all dealt with in the the manager of the arbitration scheme rules or rule K. And what then happens is that you run your claim, which will be typically a breach of contract claim. And decisions made in connection

14:47with which costs and interests can be awarded. And we've discussed this in the past, and might be on this situation is that if as a club what you're trying to do is kick the can down the road in relation to making a payment, what's going to happen is that we'll all catch up with you eventually. And you're going to get costs awarded against you. And so that's your own costs that you've incurred. And these are six bigger sums that are incurred. You'll pay standard costs typically of the other side. So what's what we mean by standard cost is that that's going to be somewhere between 65 and 80% of the winning parties assessed costs. And you'll pay interest on that. So interest is not, you know, we're kind of high street bank account interest. It's court judgment interest. And that runs at the rate of about 8%. And so you end up with

15:51what is essentially stupidity tax, which is which is being paid on these sums, which if you've done it tactically to avoid being in breach of the PSR or the squad cost ratio, depending upon what year you're dealing with. All you're doing is borrowing from a future year to cover the cost. And if what you're doing is that you're sacking two or three managers in the course of a season, it's an expensive game. Yes, yeah, short term decision making in football. Our words are sometimes occasionally, occasionally Nick mentioned in the same sense. You mentioned there about breach of contract as far as the club was concerned in dismissing the manager. For me, if it sent a forward, Mrs. Appellate and you get a draw or you lose a match, how can that be breach of contract? It does seem that the manager's responsibilities are limited.

16:56But he's effectively going to have to go and take the cam for what happens on the pitch. Yeah, what happens with managers is that there's a variety of different ways in which if you're an unscrupulous club owner and you know where parish the thought there might be any of those, what happens is that you can skin the manager. And so what happens with the manager is the managers code of conduct. For example, sets down a variety of different rules for the manager. Strictly observed the employment contract and not entrance discussions with their other clubs. So in my time, I dealt with one of those. You can't tap up employees or players at other clubs. You've got to comply with the rules of game. You've got to have a fair and effective disciplinary policy for players.

17:57There's a case going on at the moment in the employment tribunal, which deals with the next one, which is not using racist or discriminatory language. You've got to take reasonable steps to ensure that players accept on field decisions. So how are you going to do that? You know, presumably, yeah, that's your reasonable disciplinary policy coming into effect. I mean, as a QPR fan, we had the famous instance of Joey Barton at Manchester City. How do you case it for reference situation like that? You've also not got to criticise match officials, which there are certain managers who have over time had a propensity for doing that. You can't have conflicts of interest. You've got to report any breaches of the rules to the league. It got to behave ethically. We've got to promote the reputation of the game. So that's just

19:00one of the code of conduct. Then there's all sorts of other things that are implied into contracts and foreign generally. So for example, in every single contract employment, there's an implied term of trust and confidence. There's been a relatively good example this season, which can go unnamed, I think, but of a manager who got into a public spat with the owner of the club, is that a breach of the implied term of trust and confidence? Who knows? These are the sorts of things that managers can be hauled up for. It's not necessarily the performance of the players on the pitch, although you can have managers who, for whatever reason, that they just don't gel with the players. You end up losing six straight games, and that's

20:08it. You're out. There's a very good book about this called Living on the Volcano, which is... Yes, I've read it. Yeah, it's a brilliant book. This was the arson venga quote, being a football manager, is like living on a volcano any day can be your last. Football is a money game these days. So what's happening is that you're losing six straight games, even if all of your players are out injured. That's on you. What happened is that you're terminated at that point. The termination has to be in accordance with the contract for two reasons. Number one, we've got the requirement under the club code of conduct. Number two, if you don't termate in accordance with the contract, you end up with a breach of contract claim against you, with damages, then flow

21:11from that. What happens with a lot of these sorts of situations is that you see manager claims for multimillion pounds. As a fan, you might sit there scratching your head, thinking that are we as a club not rewarding failure here? And the situation is that nobody held a gun to the club's head when they awarded the four-year contract. And so all the manager is doing in that situation is that if he is old or or she is standing on their contractual right to get damages, is ensuring that the contract is properly formed. There's primary obligation to run the contract and the forms with its terms. And if you don't do that, there's a secondary obligation which law enforces, which is to damages. And the value of the damages is the value of the unexpired term

22:11of the contract. Less mitigation and mitigation is taking steps to find an alternative job, paying the same as or better. And that's not necessarily easy. The League Managers Association, for example, keeps statistics on what happens with first-time appointments. If you're a first-time manager and you've got a long contract and you are terminated, the statistics are that you're probably not going to get another job again. I mean, the statistics from, I think it was 2014, so sorry, 2024, 2025, were that 56% of first-time managers never get another job again. Well, so... Carry us, George. It is.

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24:16You mentioned there, Nick, that managers have an obligation to find alternative employment, which pays the same or more. Now I take reasonable steps. Take reasonable steps. Okay. And therefore, I read the post-balance sheet comments of a well-known football club, which recently dismissed a manager saying that the costs of termination could be up to, shall we say, 15 million pounds. So therefore, the manager has a obligation during the period of the next six months, 12 months to find a job. If that manager does find alternative employment, then is that manager effective being paid on a monthly basis during a set period of time or is there a fixed settlement or how does it tend to work in practice? Well, I'm going to give you the stock lawyer's answer, which is

25:23Thank you so much. We've got to switch to take myself in Kevin. How long will it be before next So it comes down to the principle of freedom of contract. So this is a product of essentially the bargaining power that the manager has got at the time they either enter into a contract the first time the club or an extension. And if a manager is extending a contract that they've got a lot more leverage because the this is an asset that the club want. And so they're going to be a lot more flexible in terms of how they will deal with manager. And I've seen examples of manager contracts where there is the duty to mitigate is expressly written out of the contract. So what can happen is that you can have either silence on what will

26:26happen. And if you've got silence on what will happen, then the obligation is pay the if the the manager's arbitration tribune or rule K comes down against you. The obligation is to pay the money immediately in one lump sum. And if you don't do that, then bad stuff happens. You as the club can then very swiftly be on the wrong end of a statutory demand, which then leaves some solency. So that's not so great. Another possibility is that there will be a schedule that will be written into the contract dealing with what will happen in relation to certain nations. So if you're terminated by a particular date, then you get, say, one year's money. If or alternatively, you can have the situation in that you've just described, which is

27:31where there will be an obligation to the manager is paid on a monthly basis. There is an obligation to show to the club the steps that you are taking to mitigate. So the manager has to provide a report at the end of each month setting out. It's not just football. This is something I'm dealing with one of these in their form at one moment. So you've got to provide a report to a person on a particular date each month. And it's set out in the contract that this is a strict condition of the contract. And with contracts, contracts have terms of different standing. Anything which is a condition of the contract gives, if there is a breach of condition, it gives the party who suffered the breach, the opportunity to terminate the contract immediately. And without further obligations. So if you're putting that in as a strict condition

28:41that you have to provide a report, well, there it is. If you don't comply as the manager, that's your ability to claim the unexpired term of contracts over and done with. So yeah, it's essentially a matter of freedom of contract, no two contracts are necessarily a bit the same. I've got a few questions from listeners as well. So by all three, feel free not to answer these. Some of them are a bit left field. We had a question from a listener talking about coaches following a manager out of the door when he sat, because quite often the manager will be part of a broad team. If that manager gets a new job, can the club veto, if the manager says, well, this is my goalkeeper coach, this is my set peach coach. Or does the manager, perhaps when he's going for a new job say, I'm part of on

29:45on tarage, I'm part of a broader team. Or is it very much a case of the club employing the manager? Well, I'm going to give you a depends again. So it very much does depend, actually. So what typically happens is that you'll have a manager and assistant manager that will work together. That's not the mobile environment. In point of fact, I did a case back in 2016. It's a reported high court case. So it's Nigel Gibbs and Lee's United. There was actually a comment in the case about assistant manager terminations. And the high court judge in that case took the view that when the manager gets fired, it's so well known that the assistant manager is tied to the tactics and the regime that they will inevitably be followed.

30:49And that's why they get a fixed term contract because what will then happen is that they'll be a period of there's an expectation of a period of unemployment. In terms of whether or not the the club where if what you're dealing with is a situation in which the unlikely situation in which the manager goes, but all of whose on tarage remain, then there is the there's two potential things that happen there. So point number one is that if the manager has post termination restrictions in his contract employment, which prevents him soliciting or encouraging employees to leave, then what will happen with that is that there will be heavily worded letters that will be sent out threatening to injunct the manager and you'd also have words

31:56with the remaining on tarage at the club. The other possibility I guess is that if the manager gets wind of fact that he's going to be terminated whilst he's still there and goes around and talks to everyone in advance and says, you know, it looks like I'm going to be leaving. I'd like you to all follow me. There's an applied term in all contracts employment. So for fidelity and faithful service and you know, tapping up people when you're already at the club that you're leaving will be breached that. And moreover, once once you go to the the new club and you're then bound by the manager's code of conduct in terms of how you can deal with people at other clubs and say, well, what you can't do is approach them. So all ends up,

32:59it becomes slightly difficult for the manager unless there is approval for the manager to do so. If everyone is out of work, then what restrictible interest has the club got in seeking to restrain a manager and a team that's worked with him from going to another club. I mean, the reason he got rid of them is because you think they're pants. So you're going to be wanting to conflict them on another club rather than restrict them. Absolutely, absolutely. I mean, we've been very much focusing on the club dismissing the manager. Is there an opportunity for sort of a quasi reverse or that sort of the manager dismisses the club? Because for example, if the manager was promised a transfer budget of 100 million and then the club says,

34:01we're only going to give you 60 or we're only going to give you 20. Could the manager try to enforce that to engineer a way out of the door by saying, well, my professional reputation will have suffered. And therefore, I feel that I'm at liberty to leave and then pure coincidence up at a different club. Yeah, well, that's something that so what you're looking at there is the concept of what's called constructive dismissal. And so with their constructive dismissal, the argument is from the manager in the situation that there is an implied term in my contract employment that neither party shall, without lawful and reasonable calls, do anything to undermine the relationship of trust and confidence. You made me a promise. And what's got to happen in connection with that promise is that it's going to have to be very well documented. Because if, if, if, what you're saying is that as a manager that there was this kind of vague thing that said to me on the coach back from, you know, we're talking one evening,

35:08it's to trip up to Manchester that we'd be getting a budget of X million and you've come through with X minus Y million, then that's, that's, that's, you as the, the manager are going to have to prove that there was a breach of terms. So if it's clear and documented, then that's that's very much easier way of dealing with it. If you're trying to show that there's been a breach of some oral promise that was made to you, my take on that is that, you know, good luck, good luck with that. You know, you're dealing with sophisticated commercial organisations, you as the manager are going to have typically an agent, everything is well documented. And so it's going to be a tough order to us to prove that. Great, great. I mean, we looked at managers, just just looking at things

36:13on the playing side, there's been some, I think, some well documented cases this season of players who have joined other clubs with an obligation to bond loan, with an obligation to buy. And there's normally a triggering event and the buying club for one of the bed of a phrase who said, if you plays one more match, we've got to buy, we're going to play that match. I can understand that from a, from the two clubs points of view, could this also apply in the scenario for a player? Let's say that we've got a club where a player gets a very substantial bonus if they score 20 goals at season, they get to 19 goals, there's six matches left, there, you know, 10th or 11th in the division, they're going to get into Europe, they're going to get into the playoffs wherever it's going to be. And the chief executive or the finance director says to the manager, don't play him for the rest of the season, it gets him to cost us 250 grand bonus, could the player have a claim against the club under those circumstances? That's so, this is, this is

37:19point was actually tested, I think it's back in the 1970s, that there's a case involving Ted McDougall. I remember him. Yeah, and the, the principle from that case as I recall, and this is, this is, this is being on the spot here. So, you know, all errors on this, a, a minor, minor loan, that the, the principle that came out to the case was that it's, it's, it's, it's difficult essentially to, for a player to be able to say that, that he has a right to play, a right to work, and that that's, that's, that's ultimately the, the issue that you're looking at in, in the situation, which is whether or not there is an implied right to work for, for players. And if what's going on is that there is the possibility that the, the, the manager might want to,

38:21you know, it's, it's the end of the season, everyone's got their Mignol's heads on. And, and what, so what they're trying to do is bring through some kids, fit, fit for the, yeah, for the next season, and then, then that's possible arrangement, you know, we were doing this for the development of other players, and you, you don't have a right to work. And if there is documentation sitting around, you know, there, there, there are, you know, WhatsApp or emails, you know, being old-fashioned. I can't imagine anyone being stupid enough to, but it puts like that, in an email, but we're talking about football clubs. So, some things do happen. They probably still use taxes. Or not. Yeah. Then, then, then, you know, it's potentially discoverable. And if, if it was done in bad faith, with, with, with a view to avoiding payment, there's, you know,

39:27there's a high court banking case called Barclays and then Tacx, which, which deals with them, this sort of situation, if you're doing something deliberately to avoid making a payment, then it's potentially breached the implied term of trust and confidence. So, would there be a claim possibly? Would I like to run it? Probably not. And, unless it's very clearly documented, it's, it's, it would be spectacular to be the best, I think. Brilliant, brilliant. I have a taken a lot of time. It's just sort of two or three more probably possibly quick ones. Referees. Tough job. Okay. Get an awful lot of attention. Yeah. Could we have a situation where a player sues PGMOL because a wrongly disallowed goal, cost them a bonus? And taking this a stage further, could we see a club su the PGML for being

40:31relegated on the back of an incorrect decision? And we're sort of linking this into what we had a lot of fuss about VAR and so on at present as well. It's a QPR span, you don't have to enjoy the joys and travails of VAR weekly basis. Well, no, we don't score enough goals. Certainly, over the last three games, I think, you know, we're, we're, we're to nil on every single result. But so, so, so, going, going back to the question, the, I'd say that what, what, what you're going to have to do is be able to rely upon a duty in either contract or taught. So, contract, would there be a contract between a player and PGMOL? No. So, the, the only way in which it will work as a player is if you could show that the referee had been

41:31negligent. Right, right. You can tell this is a genuine show. The postman just wanted up, came in the postman, just wanted up the drive, guest and poor appearance from Finley. Sorry about that. So, I'm professional. So, so, so, so what, what, what would have to happen is that the, the player would have to show that the referee had acted in a way that no reasonable referee would have acted in. And I think that is an incredibly high bar for, for a player to show. So, so I think unlikely that that would go anywhere. Okay, cool, cool. And just a couple of very quick ones. And why do you think that, that football fans seem to demand, it might be a, a ridiculous amount of information and transparency about a football that's contract and employment terms,

42:32that they wouldn't necessarily accept from say somebody like Michael McIntyre or somebody else working in the broader entertainment industry? Well, but, but, but, bizarrely, there's actually more chance of getting details of, you know, of an entertainer who's got a contract with the, the BBC because the BBC's got the, the obligation to publish salaries. So, when you, you can see where people sit in their salary bands at the, at the BBC, you know, what, what, what, what happens with contracts of footballers that is in the same way as with you and me and everyone else in the population. This, this is their, their personal information. And, you know, there's, there's no right to that information. But in the same way that, you know, you've, you've got no right to know where they live or what, or what car they drive or what, what, what, how many points they've got in their driving license, you know, where it is, it's, it's all personal information.

43:40My day kicks off with the refreshing Celsius energy drink, then straight to the gym. Pre-ke pick up, back home to meal prep, time for my fire session shift. One more Celsius can keep the lights on. When the three alarm hits, I'm ready. Celsius, live, fit, go. Grab a cold refreshing Celsius at your local retailer or locate now at Celsius.com. This episode is brought to you by Indeed. Stop waiting around for the perfect candidate. Instead, use Indeed sponsor jobs to find the right people with the right skills fast. It's a simple way to make sure your listing is the first candidate to see. According to Indeed data, sponsor jobs have four times more applicants than non-sponsored jobs. So go build your dream team today with Indeed. Get a $75 sponsor job credit at Indeed.com slash podcast, Terms and conditions apply. I get probably two or three inquiries every week from people.

44:40So I want to work in football finance. How did you get there? To which my standard reply is, I don't work in football finance. I'm just a teacher. But there's an awful lot of people that must want to work in various branches of the sports industry. I don't imagine you would be the same. How would you advise somebody who's got an interest in working in sport, although from picking up here, are you going to be called Nick and be able to support QPR? It seems to be two prerequisites because I know Nick DeMarco very well as well, of course. It's not just Nick DeMarco that there's also the forest gym and Nick Randall, who used to be a KC. Yeah, he's a QPR fan. It's so Nick, QPR, is he going to water it? Yeah. What's London? Yeah, all go together. Brilliant. So do people normally qualify as a barrister or solicitor and then try to move to a firm or is it something which is, I'd imagine it would be oversubscribed because

45:45certainly the level of interest that I get and I always try to advise people too. You've got to have a skill set. I don't care whether you're a football fan or not, and neither the clubs and neither do the people involved. Having a knowledge of the industry helps, but being a fan is awesome. What happens from the legal perspective? There's a fabulous organisation called Law in Sport. I know, I know Sean. Yeah, but we're pretty sure I'm by Sean Cottrell. So what happens with Law in Sport is that Sean is a master networker who has, he puts on various different amazing events each year. And Sean is a big advocate of trying to get people involved in the world of sport, and if what's going on is that you've got a genuine legal interest in this sector,

46:53you know, for example, you're doing a law degree or whatever, then I'm pretty sure that the law in which Law in Sport's conferences are structured is that you get discounts for being students. So right at the outset, my advice for V2, if that's the bag that you're trying to get into, go and look on Law in Sport's conference pages, and see if you can get along to one of those. The networking, as you know, I've bumped into you at those. Yes, absolutely. So the networking is first class, the topics are excellent. And it's just the best networking that you can actually get after that. You've basically got to get into the sector somehow. And if that's your interest,

47:57then you qualify, and then you try and pursue it. It's all about networking again. You've got to go to the places where these people hang out, and be in their face, but don't get up there, knows. That's the thing to do. I've got people getting in touch with me on the occasion as well. And so, you know, you use LinkedIn, get in touch with people, network, brilliant, brilliant. Nick, thank you so much for your time. It's pleasure. And I'll see you at the next Law of Law in Sport, then. Great stuff. Thanks, Kirin. The prize up for the fall.

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