Well, another day and another salary cap scandal. Parramatta may well have moved to the top of the podium in the all time salary cap breaches championship with their combined effort of deceit, longevity and out and out denial.
Once again fans and media alike are sharpening the knives for the CEO and the board and heads are being called for, but are they really the only ones who should have the finger pointed at them?
Just like the Bulldogs in ’02 and the Storm in ’10, everyone is saying that the coaching staff and the players are blameless and are the victims of administration crookedness.
I’m not so sure.
Fallout from the Parra salary cap scandal
» Parramatta only broke the 11th Commandment: Thou shalt not get caught
» Why Tuesday was the greatest day in Parra’s recent history
» Parramatta fans don’t deserve Parramatta’s boardroom
» Parramatta need to bring back The Emperor
» The Parramatta Five win first court battle against NRL
» Press conference: Parra breached the cap by $3 million, players may be investigated
» Parramatta docked 12 points, fined $1 million for salary cap breaches
I’ll start with the coach. As the story goes with every salary cap breach, the coach was clueless that the team he is or was coaching is above the salary cap.
Sometimes $100,000s above the cap. By definition all the coach does is coach. He’s not involved in any negotiations with the board or CEO about what what contracts they might upgrade or what players they might buy – and certainly not how much they plan on paying them.
He gets given a set of players and a clipboard and wished all the best. Really?
And then there’s the players. At the end of the day it’s them that end up with the ill-gotten gains of deceit. Most people don’t wake up to a new boat in their driveway or manage to score their wife a $200,000 a year job for vacuuming the club CEO’s office once a week. Even if they truly were unaware something was amiss with their pay structure, their managers would certainly know and it’s weak of the players to hide behind them.
When an athlete gets caught taking performance enhancing drugs, they can’t plead ignorance as a defence. Just like they can’t say someone kissed me with cocaine on their lips, I ate some tainted steak or my mum gave it to me.
Those excuses just don’t wash when it’s drugs but when it comes to fraud then everyone seems happy with the ignorance plea.
It’s time more of these coaches and players were held to account because they still get to keep their jobs and they still get paid.
The real victims in all of this are the fans who are truly innocent – and they are the ones who end up paying.
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