If the salary cap don't fit, wear it
* By Paul Kent
* From: The Daily Telegraph
* April 23, 2010 12:00AM
NEVER has the NRL been so brave, and never has it been more perfect.
The Melbourne Storm kept two sets of books and in doing so caused the greatest upheaval in the game since the Super League war, and some say beyond even that.
Two sets of books ...
Kind of like Al Capone.
And like Capone, somebody will end up in jail.
At the highest level of business, it is fraud. On the football paddock it is cheating.
Salary cap auditor Ian Schubert, until now widely underestimated, has emerged as the great unsung hero.
In one sweep of the axe he has exposed his power to the clubs and the repercussions of dismissing Schubert as no danger. It is a solid warning of the capabilities of the NRL.
It began with a whistleblower.
When Schubert found a secret file in a room where the Storm kept all their records.
The file contained smoking guns such as letters of offer.
When Schubert inspected the letters of offer he found the amounts differed from the amounts on the players' contracts.
The Storm administration tried to pass this off as merely a draft. But Schubert kept digging. He called his contacts, who told him he was focusing on the right areas, don't be thrown off.
He found work being done by tradesman on behalf of the club and when he looked for evidence of the work, could not find it. So where was that money being paid?
It was going to the players.
The Storm cheated by $1.7 million over the five years that included their two most recent premierships and their three most recent minor premierships.
Those triumphs had to be taken from them.
They are $700,000 over the cap this year.
Asked yesterday what the Storm must to do to be welcomed back as equal contenders next season, Gallop was direct.
"Certainly by the 2011 season they need to be operating within the salary cap," he said.
"How they do that? I'm not sure at this stage."
But Gallop is cluey. In 2002 Canterbury was found to be breaching the salary cap and, in hindsight, the NRL made an error that failed to deal with the breach properly.
Which is why Canterbury's 2004 premiership should be forever marked with an asterisk.
The premiership they won when they shouldn't have.
To understand why, you have to go back to the beginning.
In times of recruitment, no player ever leaves a club where he is happy unless he is offered more to go elsewhere.
The Bulldogs did this to lure the likes of Andrew Ryan, Mark O'Meley, Braith Anasta, Luke Patten and Willie Mason.
All came from other clubs to the Bulldogs.
For those of us with a little hair in our ears, it is not that far back that there was a great gnashing of teeth when Greg Inglis was up for contract and looked ready to try rugby union.
No other NRL club could afford to poach him.
Well, now we know how they got the money to keep him.
Gallop has also moved to close that loophole.
The Storm is not allowed to reduce player payments to retain their roster.
They must sack players.
Some will try to argue that it is not the players' fault - and it's not.
They will argue others diddled the figures, and they did.
So why shouldn't they be the ones to pay the price?
Because it doesn't work like that. Why should every other team play against $4.9 million in talent unfairly assembled, just so they can stick together to win a premiership before taking off for the cash.
And buckle down, because the news gets worse.
While they have $700,000 in secret payments in this year's cap, next year they will be even higher, given balloon payments and incentive deals.
The other question pertains to this season.
How much of this illegally paid for player talent should the Storm be allowed to send out each weekend?
