Lachlan Galvin saga: Isaac Moses behind some of the biggest and most controversial deals in the NRL

There’s only one thing we know about the mysterious Isaac Moses.

It’s probably easier to list the people he hasn’t fallen out with, so he’s the closest thing player management has to Ricky Stuart.

But other than that?

Unless we can derive an APB from two stock photos and third hand whispers, he remains an enigma wrapped in a newspaper.

Moses is back in the headlines as a major player in the Lachie Galvin soap opera, navigating his restless 19 year old client through the asteroid belt of divorcing the Wests Tigers 18 months in advance.

The agent has played caustic hardball with the joint venture in instructing his client to snub the club, even going as far as informing CEO Shane Richardson to give up and not bother tabling an offer.

This has since descended in to a torrid war of words, with allegations flying about a lack of faith in Benji Marshall’s coaching to Galvin’s reluctance towards the boom box braggadocio of new five-eighth Jarome Luai.

Galvin has since emphatically silenced any doubts about his professionalism with an outstanding performance in the Tigers win over the Sharks on Sunday -- but his adviser remains as elusive as catching sunlight with a butterfly net.

So who is this influential-yet-elusive figure at the epicentre of the Tigers tiff?

Starting from humble beginnings working under Todd Greenberg in sales at Stadium Australia, Moses has grown to become an imposing figure in rugby league player management who’s as influential as a halfback and twice as scheming.

While his burgeoning stable of stars suggests he’s doing something right, for every delighted client there’s a club claiming he’s screwed them so terribly that he left a necktie on the door handle.

For the Tigers, the Galvin issue isn’t their first rodeo after Moses played them off the break in the late 2010s when he managed the Big Four of James Tedesco, Mitchell Moses, Aaron Woods and Luke Brooks.

Sure, Moses only wrested away three of them - leaving behind Brooks like a six pack of light beer after drinking the whole keg - but the impact was felt at the club for years to come.

The Tigers are not alone however, with Manly, Newcastle and the Cowboys also accused of relinquishing too much control to Moses, with the agent wielding power by tactically shifting his swathes of clientele like an army general maneuvering pawns on a battle map.

Moses has also fallen foul of the NRL’s Integrity Unit, receiving a six month ban for figuring in the Melbourne Storm salary cap scandal and a deregistration in 2021 after instructing a client to provide misleading evidence in an investigation in to Parramatta’s salary cap.

He’s also estranged from former business partner Joe Wehbe plus a number of heavy hitters in club land including Phil Gould - a rift that only ceased recently to discuss Galvin’s availability - and Nick Politis, with the Roosters supremo filthy after his trapdoor move whisked Joseph Sua’ali’i away in to rugby union.

Add advising John Bateman to seek a release from Canberra on the eve of their drought breaking grand final appearance in 2019 - and his role in extending Cameron Smith’s career by negotiating a deal in his twilight - and you can see why Moses isn’t on many Christmas card lists.

But for all his broken relationships and shredded contracts, Moses’ popularity among the rugby league clientele remains abundant.

His books are packed to the gills with some of the game’s most notable names- both players and coaches - with Galvin featuring names like Brooks, Mitchell Moses and Blaize Talagi in the player ranks, plus Adam O’Brien, Shane Flanagan, Anthony Seibold, Andrew Webster and Todd Payten in the coaches space.

Additionally, he has brokered some of the biggest deals in Aussie sports, orchestrating the groundbreaking code switches of Israel Folau and Karmichael Hunt to the AFL in 2010 in addition to the eyewatering Sua’ali’i coup that secured the prodigy a deal the size of a Pacific island’s GDP.

Is Moses a misunderstood genius who simply cares for his clients financial wellbeing?

Or a ruthless businessman with a mutated myopia for destruction and a 6% commission?

Sure, such player agents may have no qualms ripping apart the very contracts they’ve negotiated themselves- but they’re also an inadvertent product of the dog-eat-dog professional era.

Operating in a time that’s a far cry from the game’s Cretaceous period when a deal could be agreed on a vein-popping handshake alone, the only truly transparent negotiating table these days in player transfers is the desk of NRL360.

Much like the tumultuous tiff between Manly and Daly Cherry-Evans that unfolded live on the Fox League panel show, clubs will just as quickly enact the same playbook of leaks and lies to traffic a player off their books in to the pitch black of league oblivion.

Add the wild card of the NRL’s problematic November 1 transfer system - whereby players can negotiate a new deal the year before expiry - and chicanery and ugly fallouts are commonplace.

And in most cases, exactly what warring parties intend.