Stormgate is actually a breeze not a storm

 
Spiro Zavos Columnist

By , 11 May 2010 Spiro Zavos is a Roar Expert

Tagged:
 , , , , ,

58 Have your say

Related coverage



Melbourne Storm coach Craig Bellamy overseeas a training session in Melbourne. AAP Image/Julian Smith

Melbourne Storm coach Craig Bellamy overseeas a training session in Melbourne. AAP Image/Julian Smith

It’s been a couple of weeks since Stormgate was exposed. And what good has come from the so-called exposure? Stormgate, for all the rantings from News Ltd executives and their hired pens, is amounting to a breeze rather than a storm.

In my opinion, a great rugby league club has been dragged through the mire and its reputation destroyed. News Ltd, which part owns the Melbourne Storm and the NRL, has made of mistake of ignoring the Polish saying that “you don’t piss in your own soup.”

There is no evidence that the NRL will investigate other clubs for similar salary cap blow-outs even though, as the News Ltd boss Rupert Murdoch asserts, “we’re not sure we’re the only club involved.”

The day that Murdoch was saying this, the Sydney Morning Herald revealed that “a betting agency has suspended wagering on its NRL futures markets amid fears that the Gold Coast could be the next club implicated in a salary cap scandal.”

The Gold Coast boss Michael Searle rubbishes these rumours.

The article pointed out that it was a bookmaker who broke the Melbourne Storm salary cap story. Mention was made, too, to the ABC’s Four Corners program preparing an episode on salary cap rorting in rugby league.

The program is believed to carry an interview with Alex Simpson, who claimed to have provided a free house to the Gold Coast captain Scott Prince, in defiance of salary cap restrictions.

The NRL has cleared the Titans regarding these claims. It will be interesting to see what Four Corners comes up with regarding these matters.

At the same time, the NRL continues to reject the calls of players for a higher salary cap, and the considered plans offered by Phil Gould and others to make the cap fairer to the players and the clubs, with initiatives like rewarding long term one-club players for their loyalty.

Meanwhile, the SMH carried a poignant letter from a Melbourne Storm supporter about the way young Storm supporters have been called ‘cheats’ and assaulted in the streets of Melbourne.

The letter writer pointed out that it was the administration and not the players and supporters who ‘cheated.’ But it is the players and supporters who are being punished.

From what we already know of Stormgate, it seems like around $1.7m was spent in five years above the salary cap requirements. This amounts to about $300,000 a year above the salary cap of $4.1 million.

What did News Ltd and the NRL get for this extra expenditure?

They got a team that developed some of the greatest players going around right now. This has been a terrific bonus for the game at the State of Origin and Test level.

News Ltd and NRL also got a two-time premiership winning side.

They got a side that has/had developed a brand that was worth millions of dollars to the NRL. The Storm, too, while not capturing the hearts and minds of Melburnians, has become a solid rugby league franchise in an AFL-obsessed city.

To put all this in perspective, what would have happened in the administrators of the Storm had stayed rigidly within the salary cap and created a club with the sort of record, say, of Cronulla?

Answer: the franchise would have been moved in all probably to the Central Coast by now.

The point is that the Melbourne Storm is, or was, a great success story. A viable franchise established in hostile football territory, rather like the ACT Brumbies.

In my view, the rorting of the salary cap is justified by this success.

There a couple of other points to be made about the salary cap itself.

First, it is a restraint of trade which would struggle to remain in force, I suggest, if it is challenged by the Players Association in court.

The salary cap restrictions, too, are creating an exodus of great players from the game. Sean Fagan, the outstanding historian of the rugby league code, has pointed out that historically codes find it hard to stay on the top rung of sports if they lose their stars to competing codes.

The case of rugby union in Australia is a case in point.

Fagan reckons that rugby league is dicing with its future in Australia by creating star players who then go and play other codes for more money.

How many more great players like Israel Folau have to switch codes before the NRL rightly tries to protect them as an endangered species?

Finally, there is a great deal of hypocrisy surrounding the necessity for a salary cap to establish a level playing field for all the clubs.

The cap only applies to the players. It does not apply to coaches or officials. And so we get some coaches being paid far more than their best players, and getting top-ups from third parties.

Some former Brisbane Broncos, for instance, are still angry that the master-coach Wayne Bennett received this sort of favoured treatment when they were expected to take cuts in the salaries.

In my opinion, Bennett was and is worth every dollar the lucky club that employs him pays him.

But this same sort of largesse should apply, too, to the best players in the rugby league game.

Enjoy sports? Enjoy a bargain? All Sports Online has your favourite sporting brands at up to 70% off. Online only, premium quality sporting goods and merchandise at discounted prices. Get a deal now.

Get a daily rugby league email

Our daily emails are only sent if there is content for the sport. You can subscribe to multiple daily emails; or get the daily Roar email with all our content in it.

We value privacy. More.