maccatak11 wrote:What penalty would have been more approapriate gundog? I agree that the inability to accrue any points this season is a harsh penalty, and there will be an exodous of players, fans and sponsors during this season, but to think that Melbourne players will give up, or deliberately injure opposition players etc etc is simple an insult to the intelligence of the professional sportsmen that play for the storm.
The whole premiership ladder becomes a farce when a team looses but in effect wins because of sanctions imposed by the NRL, I don’t think any player would deliberately go into a game with the intent off injuring an opposition player and more so now why would you put yourself in a position when a career ending injury or suspension because of a callous act.
The players were not the people that devised the scheme to rort the salary cap, and they would have no idea of what transpired by the management, why should the players be penalized so harshly when they haven’t cheated all they have done is put the heart, sole and bodies on the line week in week out.
The management past and present and the licence holder should pay all the fines plus an additional fine of whatever the salary cap breech was for the last x years, the licence holder should be forced to put up for sale the licence and excluded from holding another licence for 10 years, as for the club management they should all be sacked.
As for the 2 Premierships and 3 minor premierships to strip them, they become meaningless to the clubs that lost on the day how can they brag, oh we lost the grand final but we have the premiership trophy.
It’s the players that won the premiership not the administrators, sure you can say that because of the salary cap breach the Storm was able to retain players that may or may not have gone to other clubs that is subjective because we are not privy what transpired between the player’s managers and the club management and in fact they may have stayed at the club for lesser amounts.
Because of the total effect of the sanctions imposed on the storm by the NRL they have no sponsors etc and no reason to even try in 2010.
The next question to be asked is the reserves team also playing for no points if and I was Coach and selection committee, I wouldn’t be selecting any current 1st grade players unless they sign a contract committing to stay at the Storm for the next 2 years, and play the reserve grade players to see what’s on offer for the future.
I wouldn’t be surprised if every other club in the NRL is rorting the salary cap, the blame lies squarely with the NRL as they were not strong enough to bring in a draft system, the players representatives challenged the NRL’s draft rules in courts and won, that is why you see players signing contracts with opposition clubs before the season is over, clubs could be forced into higher payments and resigning players because of other clubs raiding uncontracted players mid season.
(about 3 million) (but really not sure what this point has to do with our argument - players aren't expected to know, so this is irrelevant).