[Tsundoku]

Watch this video

http://www.foxsports...5018866,00.html

Hmm, you may have to copy and paste the full link since it only seems to want to half work.

The Melbourne Storm Rugby League club are one of the success stories of the NRL. And now we know why. I've never heard of a penalty this severe in Australian sporting history. Are there any international equivalents? Or even greater?

The skinny is they admitted to long term cheating of the salary cap, so they were stripped of their 2 premiership titles, 3 minor premierships (where you finish the home and away season at the top of the table, but this is before the finals), $1.1 million in prize money (to go to the other 15 clubs), $500k in fines, stripped of all competition points this year and cannot accrue any more this year.

Wow. This will be the sporting story of the year here. Expect much water cooler conversation on this topic.

[polishgenius]

Sombra, on 22 April 2010 - 07:23 AM, said:

Are there any international equivalents? Or even greater?

Juventus were stripped of two league titles and relegated in the Calciopoli match-fixing scandal in Italian football.

[Gothos]

Wat's a salary cap?
European clubs are neck deep in debt because they have to pay outrageous salaries to players. Hope that shit ends, else it will end in disaster.

As for scandals, Italy had some serious business in that division lately. Over here in .pl we've got an ongoing campaign against match fixing... hard to name clubs, it's hundreds of people across all leagues, it's like every person that does anything in sports is involved in bribery somehow.

[caladanbrood]

It seems that this was done by a very small group of people, who split the contracts to hide the bonuses from the NRL, the owners and the board... interesting to see if that's true, or those in power are creating scapegoats to protect themselves.

As polishgenius pointed out, Juve's relegation seems the obvious comparison in terms of punishment, though I read in the BBC article about this that the Canterbury Bulldogs were fined A$500,000 and docked 37 points in 2002 for a similar offence. Since there's no promotion or relegation in the NRL, I doubt it will have a massively negetive effect on the club in the long-term. Might take them a little while to bounce back, and obviously no prize money chances this season hurts them a bit, but next season they should be back on a level playing-field again...

[Use Of Weapons]

The other comparison might be to Marseille's stripping of their French league title (but, curiously, not of their Champion's League title) and relegation, after revelations of match fixing between them and another French team which allowed them to spend more time preparing for the Champion's League final than their opponents. They were fined and relegated.

[Cougar]

This is ludicrously stupid of the Storm, there are so many easy ways to circumvent the salary cap, Bradford Bulls for example were famous because when a player signed for them with a basic salary of say £100k a year, his Mrs would get a £30k p/a job with some related business and a local sponsor of the club would provide a house or a car, local businesses would sponsor the players not the club etc. Dumb fuckers.

[Centzon Totochtin]

Melbourne Storm will have a hard time surviving this I would think. Melbourne is an AFL town and the Melbourne Storm had only really started getting popular through their amazing performance. Given that they will likely loose some of their star players to get themselves back under the salary cap, it is likely they will not be able to draw the crowds for the next few years, and with the Rebels (Super 15) starting up next year, I imagine it will be hard for the Storm to win their fans back, it will be interesting to see what happens.

I will also be interested to see what happens with the representative teams in the State of Origin and the Australian team, as many of the Melbourne Storm players would normally be in these teams, will this whole scandal affect that?

@ Gothos - a salary cap is where they put a limit on how much each team is allowed to spend on the salaries of their players. This is done to allow a more even competition and allow the newer teams to attract good players, as far as I know.

[Cougar]

It's also done, in fact primarily done in UK Superleague and the UK's lower divisions of football, to prevent lots of clubs going under trying to compete with teams they can't hope to match financially. There are many examples where clubs have made big investements in players on the proviso that they will win competiton x or finish in the top 4 teams etc and milk the financial rewards of success, but then had bad seasons and gone into administration.

[Tsundoku]

Turns out the Storm had another $150k in illegal payments come to light for this season. I wonder how much will the final figure be? Fans of other clubs that (apparently) stuck to this seasons salary cap, but have lost/ may yet lose to the (so far) Storm with their $850k of extra payments this season and thus earn no points for their matches are quite pissed off.

http://www.foxsports...from=public_rss

[Thelomen Toblerone]

Some sort of joke about Austrlian criminal ancestry here

You get shit like this in all sports though, eventually someone tries to cheat in some way and eventually someone gets caught. I'm certain I read something about the way in which premiership football teams pay their players (particularly Arsenal) which helps them avoid paying as much tax as they'd normally have to. Unfortunately, financial irregularities seem to be an intrinsic part of professional sport now and then.