Common sense dictates that the beneficiaries of Melbourne Storm’s cap rorting must have known. I hope I’m wrong, but I fear I’m not. It was interesting to watch Craig Bellamy’s defiant performance during their press conference: no regrets, no humility, no liability.
The truth is that most of the players in the posse had a genuine expressions of regret and sadness. These poor blokes, in my view, are the biggest victims of this selfish act – even more-so than the fans.
Their mates and others they trust gambled with their future.
It’s a sad irony that they have been unwittingly dragged into a meaningless season and an uncertain future, and are now manipulated into standing by those that betrayed them.
If one was unaware of events leading up to this display, it would be a reasonable response to ask, “what happened to that poor guy”?
Bellamy’s a great coach and apparently a great puppet-master. The team looked well coached again during that performance, but if you looked hard enough, you could see the strings.
When they strutted out as if in a b-grade western, I thought, “here we go” – the old “united we stand, divided we fall” routine. And yep, that’s exactly what they served up.
The performance had more “cringe-factor” than a DVD of Fatty Vautin’s greatest comedy sketches. It was a concocted steely jawed, act of denial and defiance.
Ok, we get it, you like each other a lot, that’s lovely, but you glossed over the real point – the damage your club has done to the game. You could have addressed it more without taking responsibility for it – you avoided it, you needed to avoid it.
It was an obvious diversionary tactic designed to generate public sympathy and support, a claim of victimisation, the storm troopers’ united stance against the evil forces that attacked them.
Well, the fact is that a few bad men have knowingly jeopordised the future of their mates, their club, and the game itself, and these few men include the players that benefited from these ill-gotten gains.
It is naive to think that a risk of this magnitude, with so much at stake, would be undertaken for no apparent reason. Risk is only ever taken where reward is possible.
The only other possible explanation is that player managers and the club conspired to keep players at the club, and player managers swayed their clients to remain with the Storm with a wink and a nudge.
Turning a blind eye to dishonest acts committed on your behalf does not relieve you of culpability, nor does the possibility of other clubs rorting the system.
That’s no excuse.
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