Rebecca Wilson says NRL must act now on Parramatta Eels salary cap crisis for the sake of fans
April 15, 2016 5:51pm
Rebecca WilsonThe Daily Telegraph
TO watch the Parramatta Eels in action in 2016 is an almost miraculous thing. From a team that spelt mediocre for more than a handful of dark years, the Eels are now standing on the brink of becoming the rugby league club in Sydney with the most potential to outgun Brisbane and the Cowboys.
Once they have their new stadium, look out, the blue and yellows could well become the NRL’s most important franchise.
Watching them against Manly on Thursday night and you see a team that believes in each other, a coach who apparently knows what he is doing (something that I never thought would happen) and a list that has the potential to become a really, really good football team.
But here’s the catch. A very, very big one. There are about 700,000 catches, actually, because that’s how many documents the NRL are wading through in an effort to get to the bottom of a salary cap crisis that will make Melbourne’s indiscretions in 2010 look like child’s play.
The club has been cheating. It is a very hard thing to say and even harder for the Eels incredibly loyal and fanatical fans to stomach. But there is no doubt that the shonky backroom deals, the third party agreements, the overpayments have been going on for such a long time now that the Integrity Unit at the NRL is not even close to nailing the full extent of the disaster.
What we do know is this — a series of Parramatta boards, managers and staff have indulged in such high range salary cap exploitation that it is impossible to just consign it to history and say “that was then”. It has almost become generational.
If a board member (fill in any name you like here) has been anywhere within a bull’s roar of that Eels boardroom, he is likely to have been party to deals that were not just rife but minuted because they were so, well, normal.
The blame game has been played out through the media. One set of leaks points the finger at a certain group. Another contradicts it and nails someone else. Then allegations of off shore deals, hidden money and ridiculously shonky third party arrangements are all rolled out without fear or favour so that it looks to all sensible people soaking this stuff up that there is not one official or administrator or board member who is not to blame.
The NRL’s Integrity Unit is busily ‘rushing’ through the 700,000 pieces of paper. At the current rate of the investigation, this might mean a resolution just after the opening of the new stadium in 2019. What a ridiculous and pointless piece of action.
Using the excuse that the issue is complicated and the paper trail long simply does not wash when a team’s season is on the line. With each week that passes, with each win that comes a genuine buzz around the side, fans are building up false hopes of what the Eels can do this season. They genuinely believe finals footy is not a pipedream.
It is time for Todd Greenberg to kill off “the investigation is ongoing and complicated” rubbish and replaces it with “where’s the axe?”.
A brutal and quick punishment must come within days. The Melbourne Storm action was swift and cruel. Two premierships wiped from their record in 2010 and a move to last place on the premiership ladder. It was ugly but fast.
So, too, the Bulldogs who lost 37 competition points in 2002 because of salary cap breaches, taking them from first to last on the ladder. David Gallop described the violation as “exceptional in both its size and its deliberate and ongoing nature.”
All of this happened before Integrity Units were the buzz and bosses acted like bosses.
The Eels scandal is at least on this scale.
The NRL will consider asking all of the officials who have overseen any of this in a period that looks to span at least a decade to stand down.
If they don’t, they could lose anywhere between 4 and 24 points.
Unfortunately, the Eels must lose points and the bad personnel no matter what. Unlike former players like Gorden Tallis, who says players and fans cannot be penalised, the only way through cheating on this scale is to punish where it really hurts. Seeing off a bunch of dodgy bosses won’t fix the Eels problems. At Parramatta, one shonky type leaves and another takes his place.
Cleaning up their house is the only way that they can become a genuine Sydney juggernaut. The NRL cannot hide behind the document pile any longer. They know the gist of it and it is all bad news.
It is time for Todd Greenberg to kill off “the investigation is ongoing and complicated” rubbish and replaces it with “where’s the axe?”. If we thought the Storm and the Dogs were shonky, that was kindergarten compared with what the Parramatta Eels have been doing for much, much longer than Melbourne, Canterbury or anyone else in the NRL.
