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A lot of people hate the Melbourne Storm, but let’s be honest, that’s only because they’re so good.
I’m a Storm fan but understand how the rest of you feel as I used to hate the Broncos in the 90s. When your club gets beaten by the same team over and over again, you build a grudge and wait for the day they finally fall.
So when the Storm got busted for the salary cap scandal in 2010, a lot of rival fans grabbed the chance to put the boot in. For those fans, it was easy and convenient to believe a number of ideas about the success of the Melbourne Storm. But now, seven years later, we can see these ideas with more perspective.
Some people still believe them, but they are all myths which should be debunked.
Myth one: the Storm of 06-09 aren’t a great side
Melbourne played four successive grand finals from 2006-09, winning two. The two titles they won were later stripped due to the salary cap breaches. For some people, that means Melbourne 06-09 can be erased from history. They can’t be considered one of the great sides because they had an unfair advantage over other teams due to having more great players.
It may be true Melbourne had an unfair advantage through having more great players than other teams. But here’s the catch – that sentence applies to most of the top teams in world sport for the last hundred years. If you erased all those teams, your sporting history books would have a lot of blank pages.
If you go back just through rugby league and wipe out all the teams who had an unfair advantage over other teams through having more great players, you could start with the following: Brisbane 98; Canberra 94; Easts 75, Souths 67; St George 1956-66; Parramatta 81-83, Canterbury 84-85.
There was no salary cap in the past, but all those teams definitely had an unfair advantage over all the other teams through having more great players. They got away with it because at the time it wasn’t illegal.
(AAP Image/David Mariuz)
Myth two: The Storm bought their titles
Some people say Melbourne simply ‘bought’ their premierships through rorting the salary cap. The trouble with this theory is the Storm’s great players – Cam Smith, Cooper Cronk, Billy Slater, and Greg Inglis – all came to the club as unknown teenagers on apprentice wages. If that’s ‘buying’ a premiership, it is accounting far more genius than any of the later salary cap rorts.
This in contrast to the way Manly, Easts, etc used to buy players in the 70s and 80s who were already proven stars – like when Manly took Boyd, Brown, and Dorahy from Wests in 1980, or when Easts got Ron Coote in 72.
So, rather than buying star players, Melbourne got unknown rookies and developed them into stars within the club’s own systems.
Myth three: The Storm were rightly stripped of the 2007 title
I may be wrong here but if not, this needs looking into.
I once read an article that said the 2009 side was over the cap enough to have their title stripped, but in 2007 the breaches were only serious enough to warrant a fine. If that’s true, it was ludicrous to deprive Melbourne of the 2007 title.
Of course, David Gallop’s NRL administration wasn’t interested in such nuances in 2010. ‘Gung Ho’ Gallop came in all guns blazing and stripped both ’09 and ’07 – an injustice which is easily fixed and should be, now that the dust has settled. They’ve already paid the fine so Melbourne should get their 2007 title back.
As an aside, we can only assume Gallop also ‘erased’ the 40-0 grand final loss to Manly from 2008. That means the biggest grand final loss record reverts to St George for the 38-0 hiding they copped in 1975.
Myth four: The Storm’s success was due only to salary cap cheating
This was the easiest and most convenient myth for Storm-haters to believe – that the whole edifice of Melbourne’s success 06-09 was based on salary cap rorting.
This was a ridiculous idea even in 2010, and was proven so in the next couple of years when the Storm came back and won a minor premiership in 2011 and the premiership in 2012.
Still, in the fury of 2010, many people predicted that the Melbourne Storm were done. They’d never win another comp, they wouldn’t make the eight, they’d even fold as a club and cease to exist. I actually had a $100 bet (proceeds to charity) with sportswriter Peter Fitzsimons, who predicted with confidence the Storm would cease to exist within two years.
Fitzsimons, like many others, wanted to believe their success was entirely down to rorting. By the time Melbourne won the minor premiership the very next year, Peter conceded he was wrong and gave $100 to the Salvos.
(AAP Image/Paul Miller)
At the time of the cap scandal, Melbourne Storm were slammed from all sides. Greg Inglis, Ryan Hoffman and other players had to leave, the club was on its knees. To come back and immediately win a minor premiership, then the title the next year, was an extraordinary resurrection – a truly amazing comeback.
Those two years alone make a mockery of Myth number four, that the Storm’s success 06-09 was solely due to salary cap rorts. Anyone who has read Craig Bellamy’s book Home Truths would know the club was built on far more than a few stray dollars and Greg Inglis’s boat.
These four ideas are all myths. Yet many rival fans still believe them. That’s the power of sporting hate!
Now what’s the other reason people hate Melbourne? Oh yes, the ‘wrestling.’ But wait, it’s only July. We’ll have to wait til September before that whinge gets its annual airing. Until then, let’s just say all teams try to slow down the play the ball – some just do it better than others.
The real reason people hate Melbourne Storm is they are just too good. Smith, Cronk, Slater, Bellamy: which fan wouldn’t want any one of those blokes at their club, let alone all four?
Never mind guys, Cronk’s gone at the end of this year, Slater probably the next, and Smithy after that. Until then, to misquote the great Gough Whitlam, maintain the hate!
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