North Queensland Fury have revealed that they ceased their negotiations with Scott Chipperfield because they were misled. The new A-League franchise understood that the 33-year old would only return to Australia to play with the Fury but when Chipperfield's wife Stefanie was spotted dining with Newcastle Jets officials, they became suspicious.

Fury chairman Don Matheson said the club had pulled out of their pursuit for the Socceroos left-back because of ethics and integrity.

"The club's expected to act with integrity and we expect the players to do that as well," he said.

"(Coach Ian Ferguson) is very, very big on integrity - I'm not saying the lad doesn't have any integrity - but we were under the understanding that we were the only (A-League) club in negotiations, so that's where it's extremely disappointing.

"We'd been through stages of negotiations with Scott, we'd held a huge amount of money over for him by doing the right thing, so for us to get to this point ... our patience wore out and that's why we decided to move away.

"The extreme disappointment for me is that, by negotiations over a long period of time, I got to know Scott quite well ... and he is a good lad to work with, but unfortunately that's the name of this game," Matheson added.

"It's business before friendships, so from our point of view, we set rules in this firm and once those rules are broken we move on."