Round 7: Storm Warnings (or Storm Financial Phase 2)

The 2010 NRL season was altered drastically last Thursday when rumours of salary cap rorting by the Melbourne Storm were confirmed. This was a rare event in the usually gossip-heavy world of Rugby League, where the initial buzz was dwarfed in magnitude by the official announcement.

Within minutes of the announcement of the Storm’s fate, there was a huge number of ramifications for a wide portion of the NRL and sports-loving public of Australia and even elsewhere. In this week’s Roast, we will attempt to discuss a small percentage of these and provide some insight as to where the season – and the game itself – may be headed.
For starters, the extreme punishment meted out to the Storm can only be viewed as suitable. To give anything less would have been seen as weak, toadying to News Ltd and bowing to the view that significant punishment would irreparably damage Rugby League in Melbourne. While it may be a lot to ask of their players to play out the remainder of the season for little incentive, if the Storm was allowed to shave $700k from their 2010 salary in the form of pay cuts or moving several players on to other teams/countries/codes, the risk in future years would be that teams would feel little threat from being over the cap early in the season.

This is especially so given how difficult it is for the NRL to find evidence of salary cap rorting and the relatively meagre resources at the NRL’s disposal to police salary cap rorting. If, in, let’s say 2013, a certain un-named team (let’s call them the B Broncos, no wait that’s too obvious….Brisbane B) realises they are well over the cap just before or early in the season and that the NRL somehow has got wind of this, then the solution could quite easily be to cut one or two players, take your points punishment and move on as if nothing happened.

Back to the players, while much has been made of their misfortune (even if they had no knowledge of any salary cap rorting), they must realise they are part of the club, just as the dodgy administrators are/were, just as the honest low-level administrative types are, just as the loyal supporters are. Many rugby league clubs have suffered in recent years from the acts of players, supporters and administrators; when people in one of these groups commits an offence, everyone is affected. When the Bulldogs supporters destroy trains and make people scared on their way home from matches, everyone suffers (through lower revenue from sponsors). When Danny Wicks and Chris Houston are arrested for drug-dealing, everyone in the Knights suffers. Knights’ administrators can’t say to sponsors “You can’t be angry at us, we didn’t deal those drugs”. Similarly, the Storm players can’t expect to play on as if nothing has happened when past administrators have been revealed as massive salary cap cheats. They must suffer along with everyone else at the club. Cameron Smith has been looking increasingly concerned with every media appearance in recent days, but he does very nicely for himself and will continue to do so, regardless of whether the Storm can play for points this season or not. If anyone deserves sympathy, it should be players like Brian Norrie, Ryan Tandy, Todd Lowrie, and Luke MacDougall: older players who signed with the Storm on bargain-basement contracts. The rorts were unlikely to have filtered way down to the lower ranks of the Storm’s starting 17. While cutting these players loose will only make a small dent in the Storm’s reported salary cap exceeding, you can bet some players of this ilk will be asked to leave and may find it hard to sign with a similar team/opportunity as they thought the Storm would provide them.

The Tuesday Roast will be back with more after this break.

Are you a Melbourne Storm die-hard supporter, whose heart has been ripped in two by recent events?

Did Craig Bellamy’s inspirational and defiant prepared speech to the media last Saturday bring a tear to your eye and a warm, fuzzy feeling to your heart?

Did Bellamy’s passion reach out and grab you, despite his tenuous command of the English language, nervous and staccato delivery, abbreviation of words that were never meant to be abbreviated and overuse of cliché? Did he leave you wanting more?

Well the latest offering from News Ltd Merchandise is for you! It’s Craig Bellamy putting his spin on of some of the most famous speeches ever!

Hear Bellamy convey the passion of Martin Luther King… “Oi have a dream that me four little children will one day, at the en of the day, live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their crackter….”

Close your eyes and imagine Bellamy in much more of a battle than anything on a rugby league field… “We shall defend our Oi-land, whatever the cost may be, we shall foit on the beaches, we shall foit on the landin grouns, we shall foit in the fields and in the streets, we shall foit in the hills, we shall never srenner…”

Bellamy channels a similarly popular figure from America’s past… “And so, moi fellow Mericans, ask not wot your cunry can do for youse but wot youse can do for your cunry. Moi fellow cizens of the world, ask not wot Merica will do for youse, but wot togeffa we can do for the freedom of man…”

But Bellamy is not just an intense rugby league coach, he also has a softer side… “I stan before you t’day the representive of a family in groif in a cunry in mournin in a world in shock. We are all united not only in our desoir to pay our respects to Doiana but rather in our need to do so. For such was her extrordinry appeal that the tens of moolyins of people takin part in this service all over the world via television and radio who never actually met ‘er feel that they too lost someone close to them in the early hours on Sun-dee mornin…”

Plus many more speeches for any occasion! With Mothers Day approaching fast, I couldn’t think of a better present for mums and contemporary English students alike!

From May 7th, this epic album will be available at all stores, but before then, it will only be available from Melbourne Storm offices at a bargain price of $700,000 divided by how many sales we get! Plus every 100th sale gets to visit the Melbourne Storm marquee – who knows what goodies you might find!

So the more you buy, the cheaper it is and look out for a secret goodie – philosophies we uphold here at the Storm since 2006!

Welcome back. The news of Melbourne’s salary cap rorting has renewed calls to adjust or eliminate the salary cap in the NRL for a number of reasons (to encourage junior development, reward long service, the salary cap is too difficult to police and it is responsible for too much talent being lost to overseas or other codes).

In the current financial environment for the NRL and its clubs (most of who are struggling), a salary cap or some form of expenditure restraint is an absolute must. As a former NRL staffer once revealed to the Tuesday Roast “You need to have the salary cap to protect the clubs from themselves!” The combination of insufficient revenues from the sale of TV broadcast rights, payments back to News Ltd for monies invested during the Super League War and into the Melbourne Storm and a difficult financial environment for many clubs (especially in Sydney) means the salary cap absolutely cannot be lifted; if anything, it probably could be lowered.

However, if the anticipated leap in TV revenue comes from 2013 and some/all of the other factors placing a drain on the game’s revenues can be repaired, there is the possibility of a substantial jump in the game’s revenues. This could come in the form of a much higher salary cap but probably should come in the form of no salary cap but some other form of equalisation amongst the clubs.

The current regime has helped to maintain a strong level of parity across the competition, but it has seen a type of laziness amongst clubs. Teams do not necessarily have to invest in junior development or highly value players who have been at the club for many years. Not to say these areas are not important, but when the best teams or the teams on the rise see their salary bill push up to the value of the cap, there are usually a high number of players off-contract who can largely fill any voids your team may possess.

The logical extensions of this are that experienced players are not as highly valued as they ought to be and roster turnover is higher than it should be: both of these reduce the ultimate quality of the play in the NRL.

In a regime without a salary cap, there would be more scope for teams to dominate over longer periods, but teams would receive a greater return on investment in junior development, would be more able to keep experienced, veteran players and they would have the greater incentive (more often than not) of a great team to emulate and strive to be like. This cannot be understated; in those team sports across the world without a salary cap, or in those individual sports where one man/woman has dominated for years, there is a greater incentive from all within the game to get better, a greater target to aim at, as opposed to a system of greater parity where near enough is often good enough.

Of course, a completely open system would likely to be too problematic; some conditions to make it fairer for small teams are probably needed (e.g. some sort of benefit for those teams with long-standing players). This could come in the form of revenue-sharing from the NRL (and perhaps slightly more revenue to those teams with longer-serving players). However, if the mutterings about the number of other teams rorting the salary cap is close to correct, then perhaps a simpler, more open system of equalisation is needed.

This could be in the form of a points cap, where each player is ascribed a notional points value based on his level of experience, rep game participation, whether he was a junior with his current club and whether he is a long-serving player. Of course, while this system is completely open and the points for each player would be made public, it has its own problems too, such as the method of allocating points for each player. The National Basketball League has operated with a points cap for a number of years now and has discovered complexities which were not evident prior to its implementation.

While much still remains uncertain, one thing does seem clear: there will have to be change to the current system sometime in the next few years. The NRL cannot risk discovering massive rorting by a number of teams; rugby league is noted for its resilience and ability to cope with adversity but surely this would be too much.

On to the Round 7 action:
* On Friday night, the Bulldogs started slowly but put Brisbane away with a 3-try burst early in the second half. In the other game, a surprise comeback from injury by Feral Thurston was not enough to stop the resurgent Eels from making it two wins in a row.
* Saturday’s action saw Penrith overcome the gallant Tigers in a very competitive, but error-riddled game. In the other game, Cronulla made it two in a row at home by starting slowly but ultimately thrashing a pathetic Newcastle side.
* Sunday’s triple-header saw Canberra give up its second straight huge lead at home in losing to Souths, the Roosters were able to stay with the Dragons for 40 minutes but repeating this task proved far too difficult as the Dragons won easily before the still-very-motivated Storm thrashed the woeful Warriors.
* The final game of the round on Monday saw Gold Coast make the most of their luck in the first half to stay close to a rampant Manly team before taking advantage of their late-game tiredness to record a famous win.

See you next week.