Not sure, But I, and lots of others know of a club that bought everything (except a ground) before the salary cap came into being

no wonder they run a 4mil loss per season.

they'll probs bring criminal proceedings against the ppl involved for embarrassing the news ltd brand.

Guys like Slater, Inglis, Smith etc and their agents are in trouble too, no doubt they knew where they were paid from, undeclared earnings and all that. The taxman will be licking their lips.

So does this mean leeds are world club champs and the runners up over there are the champs?

No, think Gallop suggested they'd just take Melbs name off. It opens up a can of worms, next you'll get ppl saying they bet on Melbourne, can I have my money back now.

Some pretty emotive comments being made by the Storm fans here -

[urlhttp://www.thebaistand.com/index.php?option=com_smf&Itemid=56&board=1.0[/url

Brings back some bad memories from our own dark-days a few years ago......

I know that they had dual contracts and the CEO had the contracts stashed at his house. But isn't the cap ment to be live in Oz, pretty much like the model it is here? So how as the NRL allowed it to happen? and could this happen here?? I know we all think Wire are over, and in Hull people seem to think FC are over (even there own fans) so could we be sitting on a contract time bomb???

No it doesn't, we didn't win anything.

Makes you wonder what might have been if the RFL had a spine

Castleford may not concur with that opinion!

Tbf if i bet on them i'd want my cash back

Many of the Storm players have come through their feeder club Brisbane Norths.
They have developed them into World Class players.
As their wage demands would grow with their status and ability, to stay under the cap Melbourne should have released them to clubs who are unable to do the same with their younger players.
Melbourne, to keep these players have broken the salary cap. To stay under the cap they were supposed to give up these players to the opposition clubs.
The salary cap is downright stupid!
Clubs who can recruit players, train them into World Class players should be able to retain them whatever the cost provided it can be afforded.
The SC in Aus if tested through the courts would be found to as illegal as it would be here. It is also illegal throughout the EU.
Melbourne have been judged to have cheated the salary cap, so what!
If the players' Union on both sides of the world weren't such a rag bag they would have taken their respective governing bodies to court. The case would be so overwhelming the NRL/RFL would probably not defend it.
Being a Rugby League fan through and through I believe clubs should be able to recruit, train and retain the players they so wish provided it is affordable.

As far as financial self regulation goes, rather than a salary cap clubs should be made to show an after tax profit with a limit on amounts that can be borrowed. Those that do not make a profit should be deducted league points. What clubs then spend on what does not matter and the game would not have contrived scandals like this.

We were supposedly sitting on a tax time-bomb when the likes of St Helens and Leeds were supposedly being investigated for paying players via overseas bank accounts. But nothing came of it.

If teams like Wire and Hull were found to be so massively in breach of the cap, the RFL would not take any action that might seriously harm them. Wigan were deemed too valuable to the game to get more than a slapped wrist (even though the case against them was't proved), so I'm sure the same would happen here. The British game can't afford to emasculate its top clubs.

Only if you lost

I can't imagine they'll be queue of honest ppl willing to give their winnings back

If no salary cap existed clubs would still lose homegrown stars to more financially better off clubs so no different to having to offload due to the cap surely.

Yeah but who cares about their opinion.

I still blame them for the injury to Colin Tyrer.

I think in Oz they are under more threat from Union than our boys, so they will fight tooth and nail to keep there star players or risk losing out on players they have grown once they reach their prime.

These are very valid arguments.

I think it's high time the salary cap was thoroughly re-addressed.

The whole point of developing exciting talent is defeated if clubs are then, in effect, forced to let it go somewhere else. It's not just in Australia. We've seen it here. Chris Ashton could be one of the best strikers in the British game now, had we not been unable to meet his wage demands thanks to the constraints of the cap. Eastmond is likely the next one who'll leave. He's only a kid, but he's already one of the hottest properties going - I give him a year at St Helens (and maybe in RL) at the most.

This is a hugely negative effect of the salary cap. The only ones it benefits are those who can't or won't develop their own kids, and are content to keep fielding teams of journeymen on journeymen wages.

Isn't it about time our leading clubs got together and demanded that the cap be raised (or at least kept in line with inflation), and moderated so that it doesn't keep punishing those who are fuelling the game with new talent?

Good post I think we would all love to see the best players playing league over here, but I just worry that teams would go out and buy more overpaid aussies & kiwis. No doubt the cap should be raised inflation is going through the roof and the amount of games we expect our player to play and the work they put in compared to the wages they get is a bit of a joke. (I wouldn't want to get battered by 18 stone blokes once sometimes twice a week for £60k a year). There should be more of an incentive to produce young british talent to stop them going to union or even down under.

What use is the salary cap when it is being so blatantly subverted on both sides of the globe?

G'done you Cruncher, nice to have a little banter without getting personnal, Wigan at present IMHO are top of the pile on Merit and deserve to be there.

I think NRL clubs will begin to think twice about breaching in the future after the authorities over there have battered Bulldogs and now Storm, I doubt it will deter here as we know the RFL have no balls to deal with it. In Oz the dog wags the tail, not like here.

Raising the cap to 2m of whatever wont keep eastmond or any other youth leaving, IMO it would just bring more Australians over to our game

50% cap quota on academy trained players would, and maybe a additional rise in the salary cap for your club if you have x amount in your 1-17 for a certain amount of games

Id support that or a variable cap dependant on earnings, just raising the cap isnt the solution

[url=http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/04/22/2880466.htm?site=sport&section=rugbyleagueFrom premiership favourite to spoon certainty[/url

[url=http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/sport/rugby-league/3613706/Storm-perpetrate-one-of-sports-greatest-fraudsStorm perpetrate one of sport's 'greatest frauds'[/url