The Roar
The Roar

Advertisement

What's the future of NRL salary cap auditing?

Roar Guru
14th October, 2010
9
Melbourne Storm's club championship. app images

Melbourne Storm's Cameron Smith (centre) and teammates celebrate with the trophy after winning the Gillette World Club Challenge match at Elland Road, Leeds, England, Sunday Feb. 28, 2010, after their defeat of the Leeds Rhinos. (AP Photo/PA, Anna Gowthorpe)

As the on-field action starts to fade into memory for 2010, I’ve been thinking about what 2011 will bring. As the mind runs through various scenarios, you start to factor in different things: injuries, origin, salary cap pressures and wonder where teams will end up at this time next year.

It is a ridiculous thing to do, but for some reason, following a sports team of any football code provides this temptation. The allure to speculate is just too strong.

But as I was thinking, I couldn’t help but be drawn back to the Storm salary cap scandal. What indelible mark will it leave on the game? I’m not talking about the NRL’s push into Melbourne, the club’s playing roster or crowd numbers, but on the NRL and rugby league as a whole.

If there is one thing that the whole scandal has identified is that the auditing process leaves a lot to be desired. The NRL has a duty of care to both fans and the other clubs to ensure that they have water-tight and efficient investigative auditing processes.

Clearly these processes aren’t good enough. Surely the NRL’s auditors should have been concerned about the Storm’s salary cap given not only their list, but the success that said list achieved over a five year period. That it took five years and a clerical oversight by an office worker to uncover is a disgrace.

In the end, only one group suffers; the fans.

As I write, there is only one line that keeps swirling around in my head.

Advertisement

“Why did it take five years?”

So what can we do to prevent another long term blow out?

The most radical change would be to have all NRL players to be contracted to the NRL directly, this way the NRL knows how much each player is earning because they are the one paying them. This would obviously be in lieu of the large handout from the NRL.

This would be the most robust solution, but would probably be met with much resistance, and be difficult to implement.

So failing a centralised contract structure, really, all that needs to be done is that the audit process needs to be made more robust, with carrots and sticks for both the clubs to cooperate and comply as well as the NRL to ensure that they do a thorough job.

At the start of the season, by midnight before the first game, the NRL needs to have completed its audits on clubs. Anything less than full compliance and cooperation results in having your licence pulled for the season ahead. None of this no points rubbish, you fail to cooperate and/or comply, you don’t play – simple. Black and white. You’re over, you’re out.

The possibility of not playing at all – and all the financial pressures that would come with it – will be incentive enough for clubs to bend over backwards to cooperate and comply.

Advertisement

However, should the deadline come and go, a club has been cooperative, and they have found to be compliant, that’s it. Double jeopardy will apply. At first this sounds a bit like an invitation to cheat, but given the previously stated pressure on clubs to comply, the only way that the double jeopardy would become an issue is if the NRL don’t do a good enough job auditing the clubs.

This two sided method holds both sides to account (for want of a better term). Clubs have too much to lose by obstructing audits, and the NRL knows that it only has one chance to do a thorough job. This will prevent fans losing years worth of memories overnight, which was the great tragedy in the Storm scandal.

This system would never see premierships stripped or farcical no points games, all clubs would be rubber stamped to compete and that is the end of it. It looks out for the fans because, let’s face it, without fans there isn’t really much point to any professional sport.

close