NRL and Kieran Foran had same concerns over governance
LAST June Kieran Foran and his manager Paul Sutton pulled off one of those once-in-a-lifetime deals that make you truly appreciate the NRL.
If the Eels really wanted Foran at the club, they argued, they had to provide a small guarantee against their Keystone Cops routine and include a get-out clause that allowed Foran to leave the club at the slightest hint of boardroom trouble.
They also had to pay $1 million in compensation.
Where else could that happen? Certainly nowhere where any sane conversations are held but Foran and his manager did it, prompting widespread admiration from the Mr Six-Percenters out there in league land who can recognise a job well done.
Sadly, NRL salary cap auditor Jamie L’Oste Brown was not as impressed, though, and refused to register the contract.
It came as a slight relief to the Eels board members, who spend most of their time walking around bumping into each other but through the late involvement of the NRL were able to dodge what would have been a very large bullet, copper-tipped.
Then a funny little thing happened.
Soon after, the NRL threatened to strip Parramatta of four competition points for the 2016 season unless they underwent a governance review and adopted the changes recommended to them.
So, in effect, this is what happened:
The NRL felt significantly worried to force Parramatta to undergo a review of its governance but would not allow a player to insert a clause to protect himself against those same concerns.
So Foran is stuck at Parramatta, about to play his first game for the club as news breaks all around him about the Eels rorting third party agreements, and significantly at that.
Minutes signed off by chairman Steve Sharp show, at the very least, the Eels discussed ways to rort the salary cap in their boardroom.
Whether they carried through remains to be proven but that they were thinking about it will be condemnation enough for the NRL.
The League knows the Eels will come up with “a clever argument” to explain the writings.
The longer the conversation goes, though, the more likely it appears Parramatta will suffer some significant penalty.
Few remember that when the NRL first ordered the governance review it also threatened the four point deduction would be triggered if the Eels also breached their salary cap again.
The NRL later removed the second clause.
It made sense.
The League was worried that if Parramatta breached the cap before the review and got deducted their four points it would remove the incentive to get the review done, which was a greater concern.
The NRL eventually fined Parramatta for breaching the salary cap.
Sharp was told during that investigation that if there was “anything else out there” the club should it on the table immediately.
The NRL believes the club had a conversation before deciding to go with the no-nothing defence.
The NRL believes this because the NRL has further belief, in the form of evidence, that Parramatta have cheated their third party agreements in other areas.
They are investigating third party payments to Anthony Watmough which, though Watmough has done nothing wrong, would put the Eels over the salary cap again if they are ruled to be illegally declared a third party.
It leaves the club heading for a fall.
Elsewhere in the minutes, some say, is a conversation the board held about what third party agreements they will declare to the NRL and what they will remain quiet on.
Certainly the Eels are the joke of the NRL.
When Melbourne got caught cheating the salary cap in 2010 after a second set of books was revealed a rival NRL coach, believing he was in trustworthy company, wondered aloud why the Storm would ever dream of documenting their deception in writing.
Parramatta not only wrote it down, they included it in their minutes.
Try and make that up.
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/sp...t/news-story/b040710e306b3f3bab704bffa568ebca
.
