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http://www.smh.com.au/rugby-league/league-news/former-melbourne-storm-ceo-brian-waldron-speaks-out-on-salary-cap-saga-20150128-12zzqu.html
Former Melbourne Storm CEO Brian Waldron speaks out on salary cap saga
January 28, 2015 - 2:27PM
Former Melbourne Storm chief executive Brian Waldron has blamed rigid NRL salary cap laws under former league boss David Gallop for forcing his hand in cheating the cap.
The NRL stripped the Storm of its 2007 and 2009 premierships and forced the club to play for no points in 2010 after it self-reported paying players outside the cap.
Waldron had left the club to lead Super Rugby club Melbourne Rebels when the club reported itself in 2010, he soon resigned from the Rebels.
Waldron spoke publicly about his role in the scandal on SEN 1116 radio station on Wednesday morning and admitted he was to blame but said the figures quoted by the NRL were wrong and the league's rigid management at the time created conditions that led to the cheating.
He said the cheating started after the NRL and then chief executive Gallop reneged on a deal to create a "game development" fund from Australian Rugby League money to pay Storm players additional money to develop the game in Victoria.
"We ran a business that had a dual charter that you try to grow the game and build the Storm," Waldron said.
"We wanted to be successful for ourselves and successful for the NRL - we were a flagship just like the Swans were in Sydney (for the AFL).
"So we set up these programs and rugby league at the time has these two bodies, they had the ARL who were in game development and the NRL who ran the competition.
"We struck a deal with the NRL, I felt, with David Gallop [then NRL CEO] that we would organise to have a game development fund through the ARL.
"We would get some money out of that to pay players to grow the game down here, so we did some contracts with players to do that."
But Waldron said Gallop and NRL salary cap auditors nixed the deal after one year despite the Storm having signed contracts with several players to pay them from the fund.
"At the end of the first year we paid the players some of that money then we were told by the NRL salary cap auditor that we weren't allowed to do that," Waldron said.
"So we said 'hold on, we have already agreed to do that and had contracts and payments agreed with players'.
"But we got overruled and in David's mind the salary cap auditor had absolute discretion so we had to say if we can't do that then we have to make some alterations to contracts moving forward.
"The salary cap auditor then said we can't do that and we said 'why not?' and he said because you have made these commitments to players for next year and we won't let you vary that.
"All you can do is do new contracts."
Waldron also repeated claims he believed several other clubs were cheating the cap and he had urged Gallop to host a moratorium for clubs to openly declare cap cheating and bring their payments into line with league rules over a course of years.
"I did ring David one day and I said you have a problem and you need a moratorium," Waldron said.
" ... I remember David said to me 'we can't have a moratorium because that would be admitting we have a problem'."
Waldron also said no Storm players knew their payments were outside the cap and there was not "two sets of books" as was widely reported at the time.
"They were rightly exonerated - it's not their job to lodge documents or manage the salary cap, it's their job to play the game," Waldron said.
"They have contracts put in front of them and they have every right to expect that they are within the rules of the game.
"We didn't run two sets of books, at the time our finance manager was CFO of News Ltd - we weren't that big an organisation.
"From my understanding there was never a second set of books found, what was handed to the salary cap auditor was a variation of contracts - there was certain contracts or arrangements organised with players and they were different to what was lodged with the NRL.
"That's not unusual but normally needs to be explained - at the end of the day it was for the greater good that this took place."
Waldron has come out of his self-imposed media silence a couple of times in recent years to do private speaking engagements or write columns on his career.
He said he had decided to speak out now his oldest child had finished school.
He has made it clear he believed after five years out of sport he is ready to return should someone want to hire him.
Waldron said the NRL's "northern markets" had dictated the rigid interpretations of salary cap rules and forced him to get creative with how he paid the players their agreed money.
"In the game I came from, the AFL, they did everything in their power to assist you to manage the salary cap where as the NRL, we weren't liked at the time because the game was very heavily controlled by the northern markets," Waldron said.
"They didn't allow us to do that and that was their way.
"So then we had these commitments to players and we chose to make payments to players outside of the cap.
"That was the wrong thing to do and we should have fought that fight publicly, that would have been the smarter thing to do."
Without quoting figures or monetary differences, Waldron also claimed the NRL publicly gave "false figures" about the extent of the Storm's cheating.
He also said the Storm did not win its two premierships because of salary cap cheating, an argument other NRL people would challenge due to the talent the club kept on its list.
"From there it steamrolled and I have to say the levels they said we breached the cap by were false," Waldron said.
"I know the truth, we breached the cap.
"Did we go through at 150 miles an hour or 75 miles an hour in a 60 zone, that's really relevant to the fact we breached the cap."
Waldron also blamed the NRL's management structure at the time as they didn't have an independent commission and still had clubs like the Storm and Brisbane Broncos who were owned by News Limited as a holdover from the ARL and Super League wars of the 1990s.
"I remember speaking to David Gallop after we won our first premiership [2007] and he said to me 'you can't win another one, they will kill me up here'," Waldron said.
"David is a great administrator but they were enormous pressures, the game of rugby league at the time didn't want Melbourne to be successful."
Waldron told listeners he would be appearing on SEN again next week but it wasn't declared whether or not he was paid for his appearances.
