@Geo. said:
I had an inkling….Would they be class act on the field if they wernt cheating for 5 years...
just about every team that's won the comp in the 2000's has slumped in the following years,,,except the Storm...Surprising or just good management????
Talking about class acts:
Agent gave revelations of Storm's salary rorts
BRAD WALTER
May 1, 2010
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The catalyst for the Storm salary cap revelations was a player agent, writes Brad Walter.
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A player agent was among the informants who helped the NRL uncover $1.7 million of salary cap breaches by the Melbourne Storm over the past five years. NRL chief executive David Gallop confirmed in a wide-ranging interview with the Herald that a number of whistleblowers, including a player agent, provided information to salary cap auditor Ian Schubert during his six-month investigation into the Storm.
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Gallop, who admitted the fallout from one of ''more difficult'' issues he has had to confront would cause a few ''speed bumps'' for the formation of an independent commission, also revealed the inquiry was sparked by Melbourne captain Cameron Smith's $100,000 per year third-party deal with Fox Sports.
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At least 11 Storm stars have been implicated in the scandal after Schubert discovered contract offers made to players for amounts greater than they allegedly signed for just days later.
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The letters of offer to the 11 players were kept in a cupboard under a female employee's desk and some dated back to 2006, the season the Storm featured in the first of four consecutive grand finals.
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''He had a whistleblower … and that fitted in with what an informant had told him,'' Gallop said. ''The informant had told him there were two sets of contracts. There were a couple of people Schuey was talking to who could loosely be called informants, including player agents.''
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Also contained in a letter sent to the Storm were questions about $200,000 in underwritten benefits to players in the form of third-party deals and ambassador's agreements. The letter was sent the day before the club was stripped of two premierships, three minor premierships, fined $500,000, ordered to repay $1.1 million in prizemoney and prohibited from earning competition points this season.
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Among those was Smith's deal with Fox Sports, for which he is paid $50,000 and can earn a further $50,000 per year for appearances as a commentator or panelist on the pay-tv broadcaster's programs.
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Schubert had no issues about whether Smith, who also has a weekly segment on Sky Sport Radio's Big Sports Breakfast program, does the work for which he gets paid by Fox Sports or the deal being conditional on him signing with the Storm.
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**But Smith obtained a guarantee from the Storm that the club would compensate him if for some reason, such as training commitments or an inability to regularly travel from Melbourne to Sydney for appearances, he was to lose the job.\
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''Unfortunately for Cameron, a lot of this story starts and finishes with him,'' Gallop said. ''It was that deal that Ian Schubert took a view of, as a starting point of some suspicion.''\
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After repeated denials and objections to Schubert's ruling in late March that Smith's deal would be included in the Storm's 2009 salary cap for $50,000, Melbourne chief executive Matt Hanson last Friday night finally handed over a heads of agreement that confirmed the arrangement between the club and the Test hooker.\
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''Personally when I saw that on the Friday it was still hard to believe that after all of the months of them objecting to Schuey's view of that deal, his position on it was absolutely spot-on - and there it was in black and white that he would be paid $100,000 by Fox Sports but that would be underwritten by the Melbourne Storm should circumstances change,'' Gallop said.**
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''I guess it didn't shock me but it made me realise that Schuey had been right all along. They had certainly protested vigorously about his view of that deal. But that's a vice in these third-party deals. If a player receives an offer from a club that contains an underwrite for a third-party deal then that is tantamount to a guarantee of salary.''
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Hanson had even phoned News Ltd chief operating officer Peter Macourt, one of the media company's three appointees on the NRL partnership committee, who in turn phoned Gallop.
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Gallop said Macourt simply wanted to understand the reasons for the NRL's ruling on Smith's deal.
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''It became public and ended up in the newspaper [The Sun-Herald], and Peter Macourt was contacted by Hanson. He rang me and said he wanted to understand that deal. He wanted to understand why this deal was in the newspaper. We told him we were looking into other things with the Storm and he said 'you guys do what you've got to do'.''
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Macourt used similar words when Gallop phoned to advise him of the penalties imposed on the News Ltd club.
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''That was difficult,'' he admitted. ''But I knew that was the attitude of you guys do what you've got to do was a true attitude and the last thing they would want to do is stand in the way of that.''
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The need for an independent commission to run the game has never been highlighted better than by News Ltd's potential conflicts of interest in the Storm case, which caused Gallop to decide not to call on the NRL board to consider the Storm's punishment because three of the six directors are News appointees.
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But he conceded the Storm's woes may slow the momentum to establish the new body, as News Ltd is now committed to retaining ownership of the club to ensure its survival.
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''To be fair to the people in those positions, like Peter Macourt, he is acutely aware of the potential for conflict and the perceptions,'' Gallop said. ''It is no doubt one of the reasons News Ltd are interested in getting out of rugby league. They are tired of that perception, I have go no doubt about that.
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''[But] to the extent that Melbourne is one of the issues that is being discussed [in negotiations for News Ltd to exit the game], and I am not directly part of those conversations, you would certainly expect this to put a couple of speed bumps in tidying up the Melbourne issue.''
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Fears about the impact the decision would have on the Storm, a team of strategic importance because of the value a Melbourne side adds to the NRL's television deal, were not a consideration, Gallop said. ''I guess we thought this would be a massive blow to them but we can't let that get in the way of the decision,'' he said. 'They left us with little alternative. It's obviously very distressing when the top team were held together, including their top players, at amounts drastically greater than what had been declared to us. If you can retain your stars you can build a team because other players see that is a way to a premiership ring. If it wasn't the team that won the premiership you at least wouldn't be taking the premiership away. I am absolutely comfortable it was the only decision.''
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''One of the things that became very clear at the meeting was the way they had got themselves in so much trouble was the snowballing of their legal and illegal payments through back-ending of contracts.
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''One of the things we knew was going to be a problem was how we were ever going to get them back down [under the $4.1m cap] for 2011 and that is still a problem. Once you get $200,000 or $300,000 ahead of everyone else, the comp is that tight that that is going to make a big difference to your playing talent. The results speak for themselves.''
Does "the Australian captain" deserve to be "respected" now? As that is what 'experts' tend to say when they talk about Smith.
Based on that, should he be available for rep season? Imo I dont think he should.
