TigersFan4Life
New member
Does anyone else think that it really wasn't that much of a punishment? The NRL "stripped" them of the titles in '07 and '09, but so what? We all saw them win those grand finals. It's not like you can erase that. The league fined them over $1.5million, but wouldn't News Limited have just absorbed that? They also made it impossible for them to win the premiership in 2010, but that only cancels out one of their grand final wins.
The worst aspect, though, is that they cheated the cap by over $3million and yet, here we are in 2011, and they still have the trio of Smith, Slater and Cronk running things. These three, along with Inglis, would surely have been the ones who were benefitting the most from the cap cheating. Yet only one of them is no longer playing there.
The fact is, all these other players they've had to let go were expendable and easily replaced. The "spine" of the team is still there, leading them around. I don't buy this argument that Bellamy had performed a miracle this year, because with the exception of Inglis and a bunch of role players it's not really that different a team to the one that won the '09 grand final.
In fact, these are the players from that '09 grand final who are still with the team and playing tonight (I'll include Cronk, as he's injured):
Slater, Nielsen, Cronk, Smith, Blair, Hinchcliffe. They also had Sika Manu back then, but he was injured during the season and missed the grand final. That's a pretty high turnover, I guess, but like I said, besides Inglis none of the players they lost were of the irreplacable type. And those players they still have are all amongst their best.
By cheating the cap, Melbourne gained an unfair advantage on the field. Wouldn't it have made more sense to punish them in a way that would make it equally difficult for them to compete on the field? Say, reducing their cap by $1million for '11, '12 and '13? Maybe that's too unfair. But just looking at them now, it doesn't seem like they paid much for cheating.
The worst aspect, though, is that they cheated the cap by over $3million and yet, here we are in 2011, and they still have the trio of Smith, Slater and Cronk running things. These three, along with Inglis, would surely have been the ones who were benefitting the most from the cap cheating. Yet only one of them is no longer playing there.
The fact is, all these other players they've had to let go were expendable and easily replaced. The "spine" of the team is still there, leading them around. I don't buy this argument that Bellamy had performed a miracle this year, because with the exception of Inglis and a bunch of role players it's not really that different a team to the one that won the '09 grand final.
In fact, these are the players from that '09 grand final who are still with the team and playing tonight (I'll include Cronk, as he's injured):
Slater, Nielsen, Cronk, Smith, Blair, Hinchcliffe. They also had Sika Manu back then, but he was injured during the season and missed the grand final. That's a pretty high turnover, I guess, but like I said, besides Inglis none of the players they lost were of the irreplacable type. And those players they still have are all amongst their best.
By cheating the cap, Melbourne gained an unfair advantage on the field. Wouldn't it have made more sense to punish them in a way that would make it equally difficult for them to compete on the field? Say, reducing their cap by $1million for '11, '12 and '13? Maybe that's too unfair. But just looking at them now, it doesn't seem like they paid much for cheating.
