[Tony M]

I can access the .dats but I've done it off my own back in working out what fields are, so there are swathes of unknowns in there. It's possible that one of these may contain a flag. If I send you a PM with my email address, could you send me your players.dat file along with the name/id of the player who can't be signed, and preferably as well the name/id of a free agent who can be signed