Let me stress to you all that I know that Waldron and Co are cheating scum. What I also know is that the salary cap was breached and the consequences, although harsh were probably deserved.
What I had hoped to point out (and yes the title should have been worded better) was that the Storm as a club has been coached and managed better than any other club in recent times. Take the cap issue out of the picture and I'm sure most people would agree. I also believe 100% that the current cap instigated this whole affair as with previous breaches by other clubs. (again, reinforcing that I do agree that it was blatantly wrong).
I said that I believed the NRL had cheated the Storm. I won't back down from that claim. I add that I believe the NRL has cheated EVERY CLUB by introducing a system that will never work, has been abused previously and will probably be abused again.
.
And if there was no such thing as a speed limit I would have never ever gotten a speeding ticket. Is the fact that I have gotten a speeding ticket my fault or the fault of the speed limit and the Governments that put them in place?
The Salary Cap definitely incentivised the Storm to cheat (if everyone else observes the rules and you don't then you have an immediate and tangible advantage). The Cap generally incentivises all of the clubs to try to maximise their effectiveness under the Cap ... this is why practically every club has been fined for breaches at one point or another.
It's very difficult to operate a full capacity without occasionally and inadvertently going over ... kind of like speeding. Generally speaking I don't purposefully speed - but I try to go the speed limit almost all the time. As a result there are times when my attention is more fixed on the road than my speedo and I go over. Two or three times in those situations I have been caught speeding and fined. But that's the risk I take when I try to drive the speed limit all the time. The penalties are fair, but they don't really encourage me to radically change my behaviour. Much like general breaches of the Salary Cap by practically every club.
What the Storm did was the equivalent of going 160kph through a school zone at 3.15pm on a weekday.
They cheated. They weren't cheated. Period.
The Salary Cap and what it aims to achieve is fine. Everyone can see that it should be higher in the interests of keeping talent in our game from being poached by rival codes and competitions ... and furthermore professional athletes arguably deserve to be paid their true worth. That doesn't change the fact that having a good distribution of talent across the clubs is a worthwhile goal. Increasing it wouldn't change that and even if the Salary Cap of $1 billion, the Storm would have cheated if they had the means. Abolishing it, would have fixed it all up, but then the quality of the competition would plummet as the clubs with the biggest wallets would have an insurmountable advantage.
Finally, wouldn't a points-based cap system still potentially lead to players being forced out? If 16 clubs each had a 500 point cap and the average value of all players exceeded 20 (500 points divided by 25 players in a squad ... assuming you didn't want a squad to be bigger than 25) then players would be squeezed out, right?
No system is perfect ... that doesn't excuse blatant cheating.
