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NRL Rugby League, Melbourne Storm celebrate a Cameron Smith try. Digital image by Brett Crockford, © nrlphotos
The 2010 NRL salary cap scandal was meant to rip a club apart and destroy the powerhouse Melbourne Storm for years to come, but after five rounds of the 2011 season it has made little difference to the Storm.
In fact, if they win next weekend against Penrith, which is more than likely, they’ll actually be two points better off than they were with a team that was well over the salary cap.
The Storm currently sit on eight points, after they demolished Parramatta 38-nil at AAMI Park yesterday.
12 months ago today, they were also on eight points.
So what difference has the punishment imposed following the salary cap scandal actually made?
You can’t argue that it was too lenient.
Melbourne was stripped of two premierships, three minor premierships, fined more than a million dollars and denied the chance to play for points in 2010.
You also can’t argue that they didn’t lose any players from their roster.
Greg Inglis, Brett Finch, Aiden Tolman, Jeff Lima, Hep Cahill, Ryan Tandy, Brett White and Ryan Hoffman are no longer at the club. New Zealand international Adam Blair is also likely to be on his way out due to a lack of room under the cap.
That’s a big blow to any team’s roster over a three year period, let alone in one off-season.
So with the anniversary of the scandal less than a fortnight away, it’s worth considering just what impact it made.
In terms of corporate appeal, new CEO Ron Gauci has had a tough job. He managed to lure Crown Casino as a major sponsor, but over the off-season had to be at his persuasive best to get money flowing back into the club.
On the football side of things, the club was extremely smart. Letting Greg Inglis go went a long way to solving their salary cap position. In his place they picked up the talented Beau Champion from South Sydney who has the potential to be a State of Origin player.
Inglis was seen as a huge loss. He isn’t.
Losing Cameron Smith, Cooper Cronk or Billy Slater would have been. Those three men are the spine the Storm are built around.
There’s also the chance for payback. The players never fully understood why they were being punished. Even those who did comprehend the situation failed to accept it.
After the saga erupted, the Storm went out and belted the Warriors 40 to 6 at Etihad Stadium, in front of 23,906 fans. It was a signal that they were angry and would make everyone pay.
Now with premiership points up for grabs again, how much more motivated will they be?
Combine that with a winning culture created by coach Craig Bellamy and you have a situation where if you were new to watching rugby league, you wouldn’t even know they had just endured the season from hell.
The size of their crowds is the only place where you really see an impact.
Melbourne has had four home games so far this season and 50,169 fans have come through the gate at AAMI Park.
In their first four home games in 2010, 83,589 people attended. A difference of 33,420 would usually be enough to send any CEO into meltdown, but three of those first four games in 2010 were at Etihad Stadium, where crowd numbers are usually bigger, with only the fourth at the newly-opened AAMI Park.
In the first four games at the bubble stadium last season 53,562 people attended. That’s a difference of just 3,393 to this year – a bit easier to swallow.
So after all of that, you find yourself asking: what salary cap scandal?
At this stage it looks more like just an ugly asterisk in the history books.
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