Thought I'd put this article here because it's relevant to the topic:
http://www.theage.com.au/rugby-league/league-news/waldron-sought-cap-amnesty-20100426-tnal.html
It has also emerged that Storm has been stripped of the 2007 premiership, even though the NRL cannot confirm how much the club was over the salary cap at that time. Insiders believe the figure at that time was not big enough to justify the punishment.
There are no similar claims surrounding last year's title, but Waldron was so concerned about the salary cap issue three years ago that he asked Gallop to take action.
By 2007 nearly every club in the NRL had been fined for such breaches.
A source close to the Storm said Waldron was trying to rid the game of a practice of which he disapproved.
''Brian called David back in 2007 when a scandal was brewing at the Newcastle Knights after a former accountant at that club began making allegations of systematic rorts,'' said the insider.
''He made it clear that he thought such practices were widespread throughout the game and that, if the NRL were serious about tackling this issue, the only way for this to be done was to have a moratorium whereby clubs could put their hands up to past and current sins and start from a clean slate.
''Without some sort of amnesty it would be impossible even for those clubs that wanted to do the right thing to straighten out their books.
''But Gallop said that such a deal couldn't be an option …''
Last night the man who runs the NRL told The Age that he could not recall the conversation with Waldron.
He said: ''I don't recall that conversation but even if it did happen, because this idea has been suggested from time to time by commentators and others, I would have said that after 2002, with the Bulldogs scandal, we were simply not in a position to hold amnesties.''
Gallop also hosed down renewed calls for a salary cap amnesty following the explosive disclosures out of Melbourne last week, adding: ''At this stage we don't see that it would serve the right purpose. If we find breaches of the cap we need to act on them.''
But in a candid admission that such breaches may still be going on in the sport, the league's chief admitted it may be impossible to know what rorts are ongoing.
Gallop added: ''Where big steps are taken to conceal things it's difficult to uncover them. There's an argument that if we had more resources we may have found this earlier but there's also argument that the way it was done was designed to avoid detection and that we may not have found it.
''There's an element of relying on the signed statutory declarations we get from clubs being true. I've never said the salary cap is foolproof.''
Gallop last night also admitted that the NRL only had ''ballpark figures'' concerning the size of breaches at the Storm. He also stated that he believed the level where a club should be stripped of flags was $200,000.
But sources close to the Melbourne side believe that any breach in 2007 would have been far below that standard.
Gallop admitted: ''No we weren't able to pin down the exact breaches in 2007.''
He added that he and his senior team decided Melbourne's fate after two hours of talks last Thursday after Melbourne Storm's board had confessed to long-standing breaches of the salary cap.
''As soon as they made the admission we began considering the penalties and it was reasonably obvious what we needed to do given the extent of those breaches,'' said Gallop. ''We've got some information about the extent of the breaches but we may well find out more in the next couple of weeks. We only have ballpark figures to make up the number of $1.7 million over five years. The precise number, the final number we don't know yet.''
Some officials involved at the Storm during its decade of success believe the sanctions have been far too severe. One insider told The Age: ''It's a scandal that the NRL could take away a premiership that was won fairly and squarely … You have to consider that back then most of our superstars were at the beginning of their careers. They weren't necessarily earning the big bucks they can command now.''
As I said before we need more information on what the sizes of the breaches actually were in each of those years. For example we know it was $700 000 this year and $400 000 the year before. Was it $500 000 in 2008 leaving only a $50 000 breach in 2006 and 2007 to make up the the total $1.7 million. (Unlikely I know for the breach to go down in size but the public must now these things to have confidence in the NRL's decision.
