'Terrible situation': NRL's concern over murky 'conflict of interest' involving coaches

Australian Rugby League Commission chairman Peter V'landys has declared there's a "conflict of interest" with coaches having managers, calling for reform in the industry.

V'landys' comments come as he revealed agents have been on board with reform to fix what is considered a murky area of the sport.

The majority of players and coaches in the NRL have managers representing them with contracts, endorsement deals and the like.

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Reports have also revealed anfamous manager Isaac Moses brokered the deal for recruitment manager Peter O'Sullivan to join the Knights.

Moses also represents Knights coach Adam O'Brien.

Asked on Nine's 100% Footy whether coaches should have managers, V'landys declared "there's got to be a balance".

"At the moment, if you asked me cold, I'd say no because there's a conflict of interest there," he said.

"If the coach is there, he's in a terrible situation because if a manager brings a good player and he's the same manager that manages him, it also causes that sort of grief."

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NRL chief executive officer Andrew Abdo added "the scheme is definitely outdated".

"We need to modernise it and we need to reflect the conflict of interests but we also need to think about a scheme that's going to show we keep up with where the game's going professionally," he said.

"The agents have an important role to play but as Peter said, we need to think about what the standard is and we need to think about what it takes to be in that group and what the minimum requirements are and what you can and can't do and that is definitely a focus of ours for the remainder of this year."

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Part of classifying those minimum requirements will be reform for agents, which V'landys implied will help separate the "bad eggs" from the group.

"The agents and themselves want this, they want reform," he said.

"We gave them the opportunity to make recommendations about reform because there's a couple of bag eggs that are a reflection of everybody and they don't want the bad eggs.

"They want to have credibility and they want to be looked at with respect and at the moment they're not.

"They themselves want the reform and we will certainly do it. That's one of priorities at the end of the year, to look at all the feedback we've got from the agents and do some reform because we have to consider the fans and what goes on behind the scenes with some of these managers shouldn't be tolerated."