PETERBOROUGH have never been serious about bringing Hans Andersen back to Alwalton according to his manager and former Panthers promoter Mick Bratley.

The Showground side have denied Swindon Robins the chance to speak to their Elite League title-winning skipper for much of the winter, and now insist he will only leave on a full transfer after the Dane turned down two contract offers to return to Peterborough.

Bratley says the terms offered by the Panthers were less than when he first signed for the club as a youngster in 2003, and that coupled with the fact he was given the chance to speak to Coventry earlier in the winter leads Bratley to believe the Alwalton club never considered the 32-year-old.

“Hans received a text from Mick Horton at Coventry saying Peterborough had been given permission to talk to him, and asked if he would be interested in going to Coventry,” he said.

“That was never going to happen even though he enjoyed riding at Coventry in the past, but there are some bad memories from the last time Mick was a promoter at Peterborough for him.

“After receiving that message he assumed he was surplus to requirements, which you would naturally do after being given permission to talk to someone else.

“Out the blue he then got a request from Jan Staechmann (Peterborough team manager) to put a proposal together and he didn’t respond to that for the first week because he thought they were messing about.

“He then got asked to do it again, so he put forward a proposal for the Panthers and they came back with a counter-proposal which was a worse deal than what he was on at Peterborough in 2003.

“He came back to them and said he couldn’t work in England for that, because a number one needs good equipment that needs to be paid for. “They came back with an offer which was 10 per cent more, but that was still way short of what he needed.

“You could probably say it is a lack of respect, but I just don’t think they ever wanted him to accept it, and I don’t think any top 20 rider in the world would have accepted that.”

Bratley and Andersen, like Robins promoter Gary Patchett, are now just keen to see the issue resolved.

“Hans is old enough, big enough and ugly enough to know these things sort themselves out,” Bratley said.

“He will not ride for Peterborough on those terms and they won’t offer him what he wants, so it will not happen and Peterborough need to make their mind up over their team because how can they sell sponsorship if they don’t know their number one.

“Hans would like to ride at Swindon, and who wouldn’t after they won the league, and hopefully they can go on and do the seemingly impossible and win the league two years in a row.”