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Was it breaches that made the Melbourne Storm successful?

flamin

Juniors
Messages
2,046
What you fail to understand is that there is a difference between breaching the salary cap and rorting it.
I am aware of the the difference. As I said they deliberately kept the breaches hidden - which is why I am not debating the NRL's decision to take the titles off them. Having said that, until there is more information I can't to judge the team's early success against this season and last.
 
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Eels Dude

Coach
Messages
19,065
I am aware of the the difference. As I said they deliberately kept the breaches hidden - which is why I am not debating the NRL's decision to take the titles off them. Having said that, until there is more information I can't to judge the team's early success against this season and last.


Agreed. As I said a rort is a rort though. They did this on purpose as opposed to accidently going over like the clubs who've been simply fined did. If you rort the system, you deserve maximum punishment for the entire occasion you did it... not just when they rorted it the most.
 

taxidriver

Coach
Messages
14,475
to those saying the players didnt know

how do you get a cash payment a couple of times a month on top of your salary that goes into the bank and not know!!!!!!!
 

nqcowboy87

Bench
Messages
4,181
to those saying the players didnt know

how do you get a cash payment a couple of times a month on top of your salary that goes into the bank and not know!!!!!!!

if youre getting paid over 100k a year plus little payments here and there, as long as youre doing your work, you dont worry, you do your work the money comes in you pay the bills, and go to work on monday
 

Fatdog

Juniors
Messages
173
if youre getting paid over 100k a year plus little payments here and there, as long as youre doing your work, you dont worry, you do your work the money comes in you pay the bills, and go to work on monday

I'm sure that's how the tax department will view it. NOT!
 

Eagle_Rocker

Juniors
Messages
546
Don't forget that it's not as simple as saying "if they were $200k over the cap they just had to remove a $200k play such as Anthony Quinn". Once you remove that player you then have to add another player to the 25 man roster. The minimum wage for a person in the top 25 roster is $55k I think, so you then have to factor that into the cap. This will be a big problem for them when reducing the $700k from this year.
 

little_aza

Juniors
Messages
690
Don't forget that it's not as simple as saying "if they were $200k over the cap they just had to remove a $200k play such as Anthony Quinn". Once you remove that player you then have to add another player to the 25 man roster. The minimum wage for a person in the top 25 roster is $55k I think, so you then have to factor that into the cap. This will be a big problem for them when reducing the $700k from this year.

Okay, that's fair enough. I agree with that - there would need to be a replacement player. But my point is with this thread is that in the early years, success still could have been wrought honestly. Remember that in 2006 at least, Inglis (pre-rep), Slater (shocking form, sidelines most of the year) and Cronk (rookie halfback) would be on significantly less.
 
Messages
17,822
I am of the same opinion aza. Melbourne breached the cap to keep the players they had turned into superstars, not buy new ones. Their achievements in 2006 and 2007 are not tainted in my view until there is more information that shows otherwise.

Tend to agree with the aspect that they breached the cap to keep the players that they developed in stars..it is still cheating the system but IMO that was one of the key factors of all of this.
 

DJShaksta

First Grade
Messages
7,226
Tend to agree with the aspect that they breached the cap to keep the players that they developed in stars..it is still cheating the system but IMO that was one of the key factors of all of this.
Get your hand off it.
They rorted the cap every year for the last half decade that we know of, that enabled them to buy players on top of the "stars" they already had.

Bottom line - they are dirty cheating merkins.
 

flamin

Juniors
Messages
2,046
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.
 

Slackboy72

Coach
Messages
12,009
exactly, you have to look at how much better that 500k odd has improved the teams and their performances. How would the storm have gone over the last few years without Cameron Smith there at all?
40-0 in a GF is a pretty good indication methinks.
 

taxidriver

Coach
Messages
14,475
the storm did plenty to be successful

the problem is that they aren't the only ones.

I'll use Saints as an example, off the top of my head

Gasnier
Barrett
Ryles
Bailey
Poore
Ennis
Stanley
Setu
Simms
Morris
Best
Houston*
Wicks*
Naiqama
Kite
Gorrell
Riddell
Roberts

A real mix of juniors we developed and some solid players we bought.

If we too had rorted the cap to keep the ones we wanted in certain key positions, who is to say we wouldn't have won a couple of titles?

The principle of the cap is to even the sides, this is unfortunate as it does so by making the strong weaker not making the weaker stronger.

But they are the rules!!!!

Melbournes flagrant, systematic and long term cheating of the cap ensured that their hard work was not undone by the cap.

Spin it how you like it was cheating on an unprecedented scale and absolutely contributed massively to their success


* thank God !
 

mickdo

Coach
Messages
17,355
Insiders believe the figure at that time was not big enough to justify the punishment.

Deliberately and secretly cheating the cap is big enough to jusitfy the punishment in spades. The amount is irrelevant.
 

jc155776

Coach
Messages
13,454
HAHAHAHAHAHA

An article based of the word of anonymous Storm Insiders claiming they didn't cheat "by much" in 2007.

Pull the other one.

Farkin Storm Apologists.
 

Ike E Bear

Juniors
Messages
1,998
I was thinking about it this morning.

*I apologise ahead of time if I've got any of the below wrong. I'm happy to be corrected.*

Just how valuable is $700,000 worth of cattle?

When the Dogs lost Sonny Bill Williams it freed up a tonne of cash and, from what I understand, they used that money to pay the 2009 salaries of Patten and Ryan a year early ... freeing up that much money under the cap for the 2009 season, which they used to buy a good number of players.

So, how much would Patten's and Ryan's 2009 salaries total? At least $500,000 ... maybe even $700,000. Heck, it could have even been more than that for all I know. But let's say it was about $500,000 for the sake of the argument.

With $500,000 extra player resources in 2009, the Bulldogs went from being the team that won the fewest games in the regular season in 2008 to the team that won the most (regardless of the minor premiership and without even considering Steven Clark's video refereeing brain fart). An extra $500,000 helped take them from LAST to FIRST.

Even if some of my guesses are off and some of the arguments a bit simplistic (I realise that the Dogs got a new coach as well), I think that helps put the Storm $700,000 rort into perspective.
 
Messages
922
to those saying the players didnt know

how do you get a cash payment a couple of times a month on top of your salary that goes into the bank and not know!!!!!!!

The players don't care about what eachother are earning. They don't sit there with calculators and add up the 25 player rosters salary cap. Its an absurd insinuation. Waldron and his cronies the only ones to blame.
 

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