I really think some posters here should listen more carefully to what Flex has to say.
The reality of the situation is that many of our T&T players are not well known internationally and any information that clubs glean on these players (even the bits and pieces on forums such as these) is useful to a club interested in their services. The level of professionalism can be questioned but don't doubt that it happens - maybe not to the extent Ms. Mackenzie is arguing though.
Many companies I know use Facebook to look up potential job candidates and make judgments based on their Facebook pages, walls and pictures. You'd be surprised at how many seemingly 'professional' companies have people in HR do this. Similarly, it can be conceived that clubs use forums in a similar manner. After all, I know some forumites who visit other club forums (Sunderland etc.) to get an idea how our players are viewed by the club's fans.
Of course many would disagree, laugh it off or simply not care. I'm not saying criticism of players isn't welcome but I'd think carefully before posting rumors, speculations and ole talk at a time when a player is on trial with a club.
This is funny but understandable. Question... wouldn't de same clubs see this post also and feel like de info purported on our site is phony? At any rate to add a little validity to de story.... For anyone who have recently applied for a job in de corporate world..... Managers and employers do ask for a face book entry to check you out so to speak so to say that clubs reading up on players is foolish is prehistoric. Its the new world. However to say that a club would accept or dismiss a person/player on de merits that we transmit is dumb.
The Facebook analogy is flawed... many recruiters will indeed run a search of 'social networking' sites to see if candidates have posted any questionable content to their profiles. For some, 'questionable content' aside, the mere fact that a candidate has a social networking profile is to them proof positive of a lack of discretion on the part of said candidate, and a strike against their candidacy.
That is vastly different from this present situation. Here you don't have players posting "questionable content" or otherwised displaying any lack of discretion... or anything else that may serve as a
primary source for guiding the judgment of a player's skill or character. Put another way, there is nothing done here by the players themselves that can be used as a strike against them, unlike the Facebook job applicant. What happens on discussion forums such as this is that you have a bunch of overly eager and often times overly emotional posters who anonymously post speculative, disparaging, and often unfounded information about players. As I said earlier... any talent representative worth their salt should be able to dispel these with accurate information... it's really not that difficult to find more accurate sources.
That said... I am not entirely unsympathetic to Ms. Mackenzie's position. Most of the talent on her client roster is marginal, these guys are lucky that people are even looking at them (being completely objective), so they start out the recruitment process with strikes already against them. To make it worse, they are competing with god knows however many other similarly situated players out there (other marginal talents), so clubs might be less inclined to take the time to sift thru the negative chatter when they know they can cut their losses early and just move on to the next prospect.
While I disagree on principle with the request, and with the overall premise on which it was made... I also fully agree that people should think twice before lambasting some of these players. I personally make it a point not to be overly critical of players, after all, there is a reason why I do what I do and they're doing what they do. All that aside, these fellas are just trying to make a living, in the least we should be understanding of that.
