Why should we trust a News Ltd club on the salary cap?

[Dr.J]

If we accept that, at this stage, no one really knows whether Greg Inglis' extremely complicated contract with the Broncos is fully salary cap compliant, we have to take it on trust that News/the Broncos/Inglis would not be trying to rort the system and, if they were, that the NRL wouldn't let them.

But on the basis of what News Ltd have dished up to the fans in recent times, why do they deserve our trust? It is only the fact that News Ltd own half the competition that they still allow themselves to own clubs. If Souths had been caught rorting the cap by over $2 million, do you think that the NRL would still assess Russell Crowe as being fit to own a club? If Manly had been caught for the same amount, do you think the NRL would still say it is OK for Delmege to own a club?

News Ltd have owned a club which, on their watch, has systematically abused the cap for about 4-5 years in a row. The 'excuse' given by News is "we only own the club, we have no control over the employees working there". The excuse is pathetic, but if you swallow it hook, line and sinker, and believe that News has no responsibility for Melbourne adhering to the salary cap, then they also believe that they have no responsibility for Brisbane adhering to the salary cap.

On the Inglis deal there is no smoking gun, but there is:
- Club owner (News) with a recent history of massive salary cap rort on their watch (Storm).
- Club with a history of somehow managing to consistently get up to a dozen Origin players under the cap at the one time (Broncos).
- Player with a recent history of being happy to sign one contract for the salary cap auditor and another side contract for his true contract, which is a lot extra (Inglis).
- Player has knocked back what appears to be a larger offer (in cap terms) from a non-News Ltd club, the Titans.
- Reason given for 'having' the choose the Brisbane offer is that Inglis and his girlfriend can't live without each other, yet she somehow accepted a job in Brisbane when he was playing for, and contracted to, Melbourne. No one knows the terms for this job, but it is either (1) a regular-paying run of the mill job, in which case why did she accept it when he was contracted to live in Melbourne? or (2) it is an unbelievable salary paying way over the odds "money you can't refuse" contract, in which case why did someone offer her such a lucrative contract?

There are so many things about the Inglis to the Broncos deal that are highly suspicious, but there is of course no smoking gun and therefore no can necessarily say that the deal is not cap compliant.

But we are asked to believe that no one is committing a murder here, and the parties who are telling us to believe it are a someone who has just been an accessory to a murder (Inglis), a crime lord whose minions have just been done for murder (News Ltd - Storm) and someone who looks like they must have gotten away with murder in the past many times but has never been convincted (the Broncos).

Trust a News Ltd owned club not to break the salary cap? News Ltd have just told us that they no control over the clubs they own and that they will bear no responsibility themselves if one of their clubs has breached the cap. It looks like history repeating itself.

 

[Ulysseus]

You would have to give them the benefit of the doubt to begin with.

As for the storm thing, what still amazes me about that situation is that by the amount of people who "knew nothing" it is almost as if the key financial affairs and other important elements of the club were entrusted to 5 people and everyone else had NFI or their head in their arse - completely unacceptable.

 

[AuDragon]

Your allegations are full of falacies.

- News does NOT own the Broncos to start with, they are only a major shareholder, which is a big difference.
- The Broncos brought the players up to representative standard and with a few exceptions (Folau, Inglis), didn't contract them anywhere near their peak. And once their contracts were up for renewal, some invariably had to be released. There is a never ending list of players we had to let go, you only need to read one of the other threads about it.
- Main reason why Inglis chose the Broncos over the Titans is that he wanted to be in Brisbane and play alongside his Qld team mates in the likes of Hodges, Thaiday and of course outside of his rep captain Lockyer. Besides, no other club offers 3rd party corporate opportunities like the Broncos.
- His fiancee would have gone back to Melbourne should he have stayed there, according to his own words. But he chose to give her career as much importance as his own. Shoot him for it! :roll:

Ohh yeah. This year the Broncos had such a crappy team, that almost no one outside of themselves and their fans gave them a chance to even compete for the top 8. Now, they're suddenly premiership favourites for 2011 and certainly over the cap...

People are once again making the mistake of looking at how good their roster is now, but forget that they should look at how good the players were at the time they signed their contracts. Thaiday and Parker are great examples of that!

I really hate the baseless innuendo, but it makes me feel good, because it means envy and fear from our adversaries!

 

[gUt]

Hey look a thread about the Broncos and the salary cap.

 

[Perth Red]

Having watched them flounder around tonight I take it back about them being way ahead faves for 2011. If Lockyer gets injured the worlds best centre isn't going to help them.

Fullback still has a lot to learn, Wallace isn't a leader, 9 is a weakness and the wings don't exactly thrill.

 

[fightingirish69]

Hey look a thread about the Broncos and the salary cap.

he asks some pretty valid and ineresting questions

 

[Parra]

You have to trust them because as we have just seen, if any breach is exposed they will get to investigate themselves and apply whatever fixes they want to.

Thanks to this latest debacle the comp continues to stink and the whole thing just drags on.

 

[icewind]

- Club with a history of somehow managing to consistently get up to a dozen Origin players under the cap at the one time (Broncos).

for a long time Broncos were the only queensland based team with queensland feeders. So it would only be logical that most of the queensland team would have come from the Broncos because there was very few other sides with qlders in it.

but you already knew that.

 

[icewind]

Having watched them flounder around tonight I take it back about them being way ahead faves for 2011. If Lockyer gets injured the worlds best centre isn't going to help them.

Fullback still has a lot to learn, Wallace isn't a leader, 9 is a weakness and the wings don't exactly thrill.

for quite a while its sucked that we've been overly dependant on locky. Wallace hasn't really developed as we thought he might, he has sort of just 'plateued'. McCullough is our best hope at hooker which just shows you how weak we are in that area. A hooker who provides ball far too slowly and dummies far too often. Without Locky we have no real play making until the likes of Norman and Hunt mature or Wallace finally stands up.

But go on and keep saying that we're over the salary cap.

 

[Razor]

The Broncos and their fans point to Folau leaving.

Now with Folau leaving they've signed Hannant and Inglis

Now go back to when the club signed Folau and it was reported he was on $400,000

http://www.smh.com.au/rugby-league/...ess-of-salary-cap-rorting-20100813-1236r.html

centre Israel Folau, who was reported this week to have been paid $500,000 a season. Yet when Folau left the Storm, Brisbane chief executive Bruno Cullen ridiculed reports of $400,000, describing the sum as a ''fairyland figure'', saying the payment was ''considerably less''.

So he was on considerably less than $400,000, not slightly less. Considerably less will be at least 25% less. So he was on nothing more than $300,000, which is what they signed Inglis for under the cap.

 

[BDH]

Really?

ANOTHER thread?