Storm slammed for cap breach

A little over an hour ago the NRL announced that the Melbourne Storm has been found guilty of major breaches of the salary cap. The club has been stripped of its 2007 and 2009 premierships, and fined a total of $1.6 million. You can read all about it in the link, and also Melbourne's statement here. But here's a quick list of the facts.

Stripped of the 2007 and 2009 NRL premierships
Stripped of the minor premierships of 2006-08
Stripped of all competition points for the 2010 season
Fined $500,000
Will be forced to return $1.1 million in prize money (prize money to be distributed evenly among the other 15 clubs)
Individual awards by players will continue to be recognised
Neither Manly (2007) nor Parramatta (2009) will assume the premiership titles in their respective years
Salary cap breaches amounted to at least $1.7 million over five years
Salary cap breach around $400,000 in 2009
Salary cap breach projected to be $700,000 in 2010
NRL says the Storm maintained a dual-contract system

“I regret we have probably not yet uncovered the full extent of this fraud.”

It’s a sorry day for the sport of Rugby League; the game just can’t take a hit at the moment. It seems to be one scandal after the next. But credit has to be given to the NRL for unearthing the fraud. We must remember that the NRL isn’t at fault here, rather those who were involved at the Melbourne Storm. The quote above is from this statement from the Melbourne Storm's owners; News Limited. It highlights the fact that we'll surely hear a lot more from this story over the coming weeks.

There’s no doubting that the salary cap has been the contributing factor to the most successful years Rugby League has had in Australia. It has improved our game remarkably. The competition is tighter, there’s no more ‘bunny’ clubs, and clubs are under considerably less financial pressure. No matter which way you look at it, the salary cap rule has brought far more good than harm to the sport. When a team decides to break this rule, the consequences need to be severe and I for one am happy with the punishment Melbourne have been given.

Every team, coach, player and fan deserves the right to feel cheated by what the Melbourne Storm has done. This is the team that has knocked us out of the finals 3 years in a row, and to learn that they have done this while pulling the wool over our eyes is infuriating. Bellamy is running his mouth off claiming that neither he nor his players had any idea of what was happening. I find this extremely hard to believe. Players talk about how much they are earning to one another. With such a substantial breach of the cap, it wouldn’t have taken a genius to figure out that something fishy was going on. Like I said earlier, we'll learn about exactly who was involved over the coming weeks.

For now, it’s blown the league wide-open. The league is effectively down to 15 teams now, and a guaranteed top-8 finisher won’t be there at the end of the season. Obviously this improves a lot of teams' chances of a finals berth. It’s certainly all to play for now.