Just say negotiations are under way about a potential backflip on the Titans deal with a view to staying at Manly.

You are doing nothing wrong. It's allowed under NRL rules. Blame the system. Everyone else does.

Someone's word stopped being as solid as oak in rugby league years ago. Since Super League, a contract has been as useful as a losing TAB ticket.

"Renege" used to be a dirty word, too. Now, in League Land, it's as common as KFC.

Until the NRL cleans up the contract system and abolishes the "round 13" deadline that allows clubs to convince players signed elsewhere to back out of an agreement, we should be prepared for more contract drama than ever before.

So the story about Cherry-Evans having second thoughts about heading to the Gold Coast is purely media speculation? A beat-up? A fabrication?

Bloody media.

So the recent meeting between Orr (Cherry-Evans' manager), Kelly (the Manly chief executive) and Fox Sports chief executive Patrick Delaney at the network's Artarmon studios was to discuss other issues, like climate change and the crisis in the Middle East?

Just as bookmakers usually know before anyone else if an injured halfback is about to be ruled out, player managers know what's happening in the murky world of NRL contract negotiations.

They've been talking about a potential Cherry-Evans backflip for a few weeks now. It was Channel Nine's Erin Molan who broke the story last Thursday night, on the 6pm news.

It was dressed up as "great news for Manly fans" as if a deal had been stitched up but as Molan reported, the fact was the Sea Eagles and Cherry-Evans' management were in discussions about him potentially staying.

Molan rarely reports these types of stories. Certainly not contract stories. That she became involved with this one highlights how confident she was about her information.

Typical of the rugby league narrative, the story spread like a bushfire, degenerating into an "Is Daly staying or is Daly going?" situation.

The truth is there is no answer to that question. We won't know until the end of round 13, when negotiations for the following season need to be finalised.

When the 26-year-old spoke outside of his home on Saturday, he told reporters "nothing's changed". On Monday, he again tried to "put everything to bed", but fell just short.

"There has been no changes to my current contract situation," a bemused Cherry-Evans said. "I went through that process seven weeks ago and there is absolutely nothing to report. I understand speculation will remain until round 13 but there is nothing to report in changes to my contract."

It was the right answer to the wrong question. It isn't a matter of whether he is staying or going, but whether he might be.

Orr certainly left the door ajar when I contacted him on Monday, claiming his client's "preference" was to sign with the Titans. "There's no change to the situation, at this stage," Orr said. "Daly's preference is to head to the Titans."

Then he said this in relation to Manly and Kelly, who had withdrawn the offer to the halfback at a critical stage of negotiations last month: "Daly didn't take the offer off the table. If there is any change, it is in the hands of Manly."

I like Gav. He and his brother Chris do the best for their clients. They anger club chief executives quite a lot. Gavin once promised me an interview with one of his leading players. When the interview appeared in a rival newspaper, I phoned him to ask what had happened. "Mate, I didn't know anything about it," he said, which was strange because Gavin was quoted in the same story he apparently knew nothing about.

There are myriad theories why Cherry-Evans might have cold feet on the Titans deal, ranging from his partner's desire to remain close to family on the northern beaches to Daly only realising now that any potential media career - presumably with Fox Sports - will only flourish if he stays in Sydney.

There is also a strong belief that it's part of a larger game of cat-and-mouse involving Gold Coast captain Nate Myles, who is part of the Orr stable and potentially on the move to Manly.

If Cherry-Evans stays at Manly, the Titans could use those dollars to sign Myles and then Aidan Sezer might back out of his deal at Canberra, where coach Ricky Stuart must be shaking his head at this whole mess having seen James Tedesco back out of deal to join Canberra last year and Josh Papalii back out of an Eels deal when he was coach at Parramatta.

You get an ice cream headache just thinking about it.

If ever the NRL needed prompting to fix its contract system, the fact that any player manager can now use the round 13 deadline as a negotiation device is surely it. It was introduced to protect clubs and players. It gives clubs a second chance to retain a player who might've hastily agreed to a deal, under duress or pressure. It protects players from being told late in the season they aren't wanted for the next, meaning they have to hastily uproot their lives and that of their family. Current players, though, are seemingly tired of it, with Corey Parker telling Sky Sports Radio on Monday morning the system was a "comical joke" and presented an "unprofessional look" for the NRL.

Then there's the poor old fan, the last one usually discussed when it comes to these issues.

On Monday, the NRL's executive was locked in a leadership meeting, thrashing out the code's major issues. Hopefully, the contract system and the Cherry-Evans situation were discussed at length.

Shane Richardson - who felt this sort of pain when Luke Lewis backflipped out of a deal to stay with Penrith after signing with Souths - has been charged with devising a new look for the code. Drafts and trading periods are all on the board in a "whole of game" restructure of the code.

Greater certainty and transparency over player recruitment and retention needs to be a central part of it, so we never utter the word "renege" again.