The Melbourne Storm are Cheats

The best NRL team we’ve seen this decade is a fraud. The Melbourne Storm, with two Premierships from four consecutive Grand Finals are cheats. They cheated their way to those titles, they cheated their fans and they have cheated the rugby league community. There can be no justification.

At 4pm AEST today NRL Chief Executive David Gallop announced the Melbourne Storm would be:

· Stripped of the 2007 and 2009 Premierships
· The 2006 and 2008 Minor Premierships
· Forced to repay $1.1 million worth of prize money
· Fined a further $500,000
· Lose all 2010 competition points and will NOT earn ANY more competition points this season

The Storm have cheated the salary cap to the tune of at least $1.6 million over seven years: using a complicated method designed to pay players more money than they were allowed. The full NRL press release is available here.

I’m writing this less than an hour after the news was confirmed (I had to scrap a previously written piece on the Refs – that will keep!!). I’m feeling a range of emotions to this story – shock, anger, sadness, disappointed, used, deceived and so on.

The one overlaying thought that is popping up everywhere is – the Melbourne Storm are cheats. And they are, there’s no beating around that bush.

For what, five years or so, I and most rugby league fans watched what we thought was an absolute champion team. We paid good money to watch these guys play. As a Broncos fan I looked forward to playing the Storm because I know they were that damn good and we’d have to be at our very best to beat them. But today I know the Storm should never have been that good.

Storm Players

I’m not taking a shot at the individuals in the Storm team – the superstars are still absolute champion players. I would pay money every day to watch Slater, Cronk, Smith, Inglis, Folau, Johnson and the rest.

But the thing is – we should never have been watching them all play together in the Melbourne Storm team.

Implications

In the next 24 hours this story will shift towards general salary cup discussions – how players should earn more money, how every club cheats but the Storm got caught, why this wasn’t found sooner.

There is a heck of a lot to this story but the thing that’s going to annoy everyone is Melbourne Storm went to a massive effort to hide it. They knew they were cheating and they’ve been punished. It’s a sad day for their fans and the rugby league community.

Triple M journalist and their Monday Night Football commentator Dan Ginnane sums it up perfectly on Twitter:

“An hour ago Melbourne Storm were three time champions, now they're the biggest cheats in the history of the game.”

TIPPING

Tips – Broncos, Eels, Panthers, Knights, Canberra, Roosters, Storm, Manly
Last Week – 5/8
Total – 25/48 (50%)

There’s plenty to say on this issue so please share your views with me at Sports Australia, Facebook, Twitter (@keyto316) and directly on email at andrew.keyte@gmail.com.

Hopefully we can get a heap of good footy this weekend.

Cheers,
Keyto