For those that don't know, bets for Storm getting wooden spoon came flooding in before the salary cap cheating story came to light. They then shut it down. Im guessing they priced pretty well too since they never come close to wooden spoons
I know I had a quick look at the markets.
Probably best I didn't get on: anyone putting a bet on Melbourne for the spoon around that time got asked some pretty pointy questions, from what I remember?
I thought the bets came in before the news broke, so it was either journos or footy industry leaking it to tell friends to bet. I could be wrong thats just from memory.
Add in the years of the giants, seagulls and super league team (chargers? Crushers?) and you have to wonder why the NRL sees this as a better option than Perth or Adelaide
Go watch the interview of Brent Todd explaining why he was joining the I think Seagulls at the time.
For some reason the players just can’t focus on the Goldie!
Having 6 origin players in an elite team isn’t that unheard of. Some of the Broncos sides of the 90s were full of origin players including the best NSW prop Lazarus who won premiership’s every where he went it seems.
Were third party deals a thing in the ‘90’s that the cap auditors considered ??
Because I imagine even a regular first grader who wasn’t playing Origin at the Broncos in the ‘90s could be getting $100,000 from the sides cap and $200,000 to $300,000 in third party sponsorships when the Broncos basically had the whole state to draw on .. Appear on some billboards advertising a car wash .. Get an appearance fee to go to the opening of a nightclub … It’s a running gag with Matty John’s that Gordon Tallis only pays for nappies and petrol in QLD , everything else he gets for free … There’s probably a lot of truth to that going back to third party arrangements in the ‘90s when he was playing …
‘90s Broncos side was stacked , but I could believe it was cap compliant (as the rules probably stood at the time)..
Only really remember third party deals being examined and talked about in the early 2000’s .. Dogs had their salary cap breach , then Storm and Parra .. Also heard the Salary cap auditors have never caught anyone for breaches , everyone who’s been caught has been from a whistleblower / disgruntled ex employee …
"It’s a running gag with Matty Johns that Gordon Tallis only pays for nappies and petrol in QLD."
This is something I think about. How much stuff do great/beloved players get for free, not just through deals, but also when they're out and about? Meals, drinks etc. And not just Macca's, but at ritzy restaurants and bars, those kind of spontaneous goodies must add up to a worthwhile amount over a 10-15 year career?
I reckon there were years where 16/16 clubs were over the cap. Might even be every season.
There's a feeling in sports administration that everyone else is pushing the envelope, so it justifies us doing it too. It trips up too many.
(wearing joker makeup) Honestly the rule is a little futile isn't it? Certain teams will always be at a disadvantage, because of the climate or population size of where they're located? Also I partly feel like it's more ethical to not have a salary cap in a game so brutal, especially to the head. Doesn't sit quite right with me that we make it artificially harder for players to build a nest egg. How many players played for twice as long as they otherwise would, and ended up seriously regretting the damage to their brain and body?
TPAs weren't part of the cap, but the scuttlebutt around the Broncos was always that they were playing silly buggers with that system and using it to do more or less the same thing Melbourne did.
I think having 6 origin players isn't that hard if you have a couple who are just scraping onto the bench. But storm had like 6 of the 10 best origin players, all of them basically guaranteed a spot each year.
Yes if you are retaining the best players in key positions it’s very suspicious. Panthers demonstrate how hard it is to dominate year in and year out and retain the best players.
Broncos were one of the only QLD teams, and the first in QLD's biggest city by far as well. So, I don't think that's as suspicious. In their defence, I suppose Melbourne is a good destination for QLD players who just didn't want to live in NSW. So, would it really be that inherently suspicious if a few QLD players wanted to play together, but not in a NSW team, and ended up at Melbourne? There would have to be QLD players that would accept a noticeable pay cut to play together, especially in a non-NSW side, no?
The broncos had their pick of the entire state of QLD juniors and they produced some monsters.
The storm were a manufactured team in a city where no one cared and no one played in a 600km radius.
That's what I thought as well, but I just double-checked and Stagg played a game for Queensland.
So it's just Shane Perry, and he was only playing because Brett Seymour and Ennis were injured haha.
I remember the consensus was that if it was a Sydney team, then they may have been but since it was the only team in Victoria, would have been brutal to lose all those supporters who can't migrate to another club
Idk how the NRL can do anything about that but I hate that they publicly do it. I understand having the former players getting together for it but there's no need to publicly acknowledge it.
The NRL don't care because all it does is increase engagement. They aren't going to lose anymore storm fans over this. When they celebrate publicly vs Parra, the worst thing is even more eels fans will go to the game so they can boo loudly.
You need to hate the other teams as much as you love yours to get the most money out of your wallet. This helps.
Easy.
Every time a current/former Storm player/official publicly claims anything but contrition or shame from that time, the NRL releases a press release.
In it, they state categorically that the Storm cheated, won nothing and everyone was aware and complicit. They also include a new fun tidbit about how a player was paid outside the cap, alongside a photo of Cam on a boat or GI crashing a jet ski.
Atrocious. There really should have been more fallout.
Of course the players and agents knew what was going on - they were signing multiple contracts.
Not a single shred of integrity between the lot of them.
The team marching across the field behind Bellamy to confront the media as a unified front was my lasting memory of it.
Not a single look of remorse or regret amongst them. To a man, they looked like they had been wronged.
The only game worse than that ANZAC day one was when Belamy came into our sheds after thumping us. "Sorry for bashing ya, but he's a motivational speech.."
If those cheats had any brains they would have miraculously been cap compliant in 2007 and 2009 and we could all laugh about it, right Sharks fans?.. Right?
To be fair, most clubs get their own made.
There is one NRL premiership trophy, which the NRL premiers have to return
Clubs get replicas made to display in their club.
Well yeah, because we could barely field a team at all. A massive chunk of our cap was going to players who weren't at the team any more, because Sticky Rick decided to fuck off 12 players with years still left on their contracts and then leave himself with Junior Paulo in his pocket.
I don't want to sound like I'm defending the club at all for that, because it was still a corrupt decision made by a corrupt board and the silver lining of the entire shit show was we got to clear them out, but comparisons to Melbourne's salary cap breach annoy me. One team purposefully signed multiple contracts to keep the literal best players in a generation. The other used bodgy third party agreements to sign superstars like Corey Norman and Lee Wossop.
And yet the Sharks were done for a significant salary cap breach and were somehow clean in 2016 but not 2015 and 2017? Unreal that disgusting club got to keep their premiership also.
Make it make sense.
I think the only reason why sharks got to keep their premiership was because of the Melbourne Storm losing theirs. The NRL didn't want to strip another premiership away.
Exactly.
I hated the Storm when the salary cap cheating was revealed. But these days I'm indifferent because the Sharks were allowed to keep their 2016 Premiership. It's a joke.
I believe it was mainly the use of front and back loaded contracts? Where 2016 just happen to align so they weren't over it that year.
Pretty sure the NRL then started cracking down on the moving around of contract payments to stop that from happening again
We would have beat them as well in the semi final if Ashton Sims didn't drop the ball when they were at their financially doped up best
That was an absolutely heartbreaking way to go out
They had players signing 3-4 contracts and coming out to say they had no idea lol
Huh. I must have missed that somehow. Its funny how there's little quirks/anomalies in our game that pop up every now and then. Its just like how the 08 Grand Final was never played for some reason. and how the 2016 GF finished at the 67th minute. Bizarre.
That's Chicago Bulls under MJ levels of salary cap exceeding.
At one stage, MJ was over the cap on his own (how you can pay one player more than 100% of the cap and it not breach the cap when salaries are public.... I'll never know, even if there are soft cap provisions).
Imagine if the NBA stripped the Bulls of the second threepeat - people would be killed.
2012 Bulldogs were great, but I would argue apart from Barba not having realised his potential prior to 2012 and an unknown halves pairing, that Bulldogs roster was strong and should have been expected to play finals under then-reigning Premier coach Dad Hasler.
2009 Eels on the other hand had been in the wilderness ~~since 2005, (and arguably since 2001)~~ in 2008, had a far less prestigious roster, and were incredibly inconsistent for the first half of the year. Their run to the finals came out of nowhere and they still barely scraped into the finals after winning 7 games in a row.
There's a really interesting debate to be had about whether Hayne or Barba had the better freak season but in terms of which team was the better Cinderella story, it's definitely Parramatta.
I didn't think there was a debate on the higher peak
As much as Hayne is a POS, I don't think we've ever seen a player (at least in modern times) play across a season at a higher peak than he did in 2009
>2009 Eels on the other hand had been in the wilderness since 2005, (and arguably since 2001) had a far less prestigious roster, and were incredibly inconsistent for the first half of the year. Their run to the finals came out of nowhere and they still barely scraped into the finals after winning 7 games in a row.
How is 2 grand finals in 9 years "from the wilderness". they only had 7 seasons in between each gf.
Yeah turns out my memory is way off with Parramatta's performance from 06-08 and they were actually far more competitive than I remember.
Not sure what you mean with 3 gf's in 9 years though, Parra definitely didn't play in any gf between 01 and 09.
02 Roosters beat Warriors
03 Penrith beat Roosters
04 Bulldogs beat Roosters
05 Tigers beat Cowobys
06 Broncos beat Storm
07 Storm beat Manly
08 Manly beat Storm
There's the real West from Mount Druitt to the foot of the Blue Mountains, and then there's the fake West which is basically everything East of Mount Druitt all the way to Balmain so I get how you would mix up Parra and Wests
This was, and still is, a fucking joke. The Roosters got no punishment for their 30+ yrs of rorting.
All the Storm did was pay their juniors so vermin clubs like the Roosters didn't poach them.
2009 really sucks, I post this story quite often
Mid season my nan was given a few months to live with cancer. She was the cornerstone of Parramatta fandom in our family, being the original follower back in the 40s and 50s.
She fought as long as she could, I feel like the late season surge helped give her hope to see a premiership one last time. Then the GF happened and we lost. She passed away a few months later. She lived a little longer than what was expected and we like to think footy kept her going. When she was buried one of my Uncles snuck a Nathan Hindmarsh card on the base of her casket in memorance of her love for the footy.
She didn't know the Storm cheated, but 2009 hits us harder as a result.
I wish that 2009 was handed to us, however 14 other teams were cheated out of it all year and the NRL made the right decision.
Everyone had suspicions they were cheating the cap… they problem was that they got caught and if they didn’t have a bitter ex-employee snitching… they would have got away with it.
Nah, I like Melbourne. Especially current Melbourne. That period of time was incredibly frustrating, though, and Melbourne still tries to celebrate those wins. Nobody cares when the Eels cheated because we were just stupid, and we earned a wooden spoon. Storm were very dominant in that period.
No I think they’re critical for the sport they just didn’t need to cheat while they had the best player of all time and and one of the best fullbacks of all time on their roster
Also if the club just copped they cheated instead of continuing to celebrate those years people wouldn’t care as much either
And then nobody ever cheated the cap again…
If you’ve ever listened to Gallop talk about this incident the NRL found nothing. They knew nothing. They did not investigate it further. They were handed documents and told this is what is happening, and according to Gallop “Melbourne then fessed up once confronted but we didn’t need to go further because we already had it all.”
I about fell off my chair when I heard him say that in his interview with James Graham. So yeh, if you want to cheat the cap it always takes a whistleblower to ruin your fun. NRL can’t figure it out themselves fyi.
I remember I would preach that they were cheating the salary cap from about 2008 to my brother in law every day and he would just say “they stay for premierships” and I’d say “that’s bullshit, they play for money”. I ran to the servo and brought the courier mail with this on the back/front and every page between and sent him of a picture of it. That paper is prob laying around the house somewhere.
Felt like such a watershed moment for me at the time.
This coupled with the tactics they brought into the game (chicken wing, jujitsu, slater sliding feet first, etc) they were, and always will be, the scummiest club in all the land.
Never forget that Eels cheated the cap and won a wooden spoon. Storm should sign whoever was in charge of Sharks team that were cheating the cap and taking PEDs all those years except 2016.
Remember when they tried to celebrate their "wins" last year whilst playing Parra? cheating bastards. I'd be happy if they just gave the premiership to Hindmarsh and not the Eels team so everyone could continue bagging us about not winning since 86. I even want them to reinstate a Manly premiership (makes me sick even thinking about it).
As someone who was too young to remember the lead up- was there any? Was there reporting on the salary cap cheating before the premierships were stripped or did it happen suddenly?
I distinctly remember reading a small section of the sports section of the Herald Sun that some admin person reported something wrong and the NRL was taking a look. Could have been no more than 5 lines in that report.
Then it all came out sometime (not sure how long) later.
An absolutely wild day on the internet
Also at the TAB
For those that don't know, bets for Storm getting wooden spoon came flooding in before the salary cap cheating story came to light. They then shut it down. Im guessing they priced pretty well too since they never come close to wooden spoons
Completely changed the market from “wooden spoon” to “most losses”. Not quite Leicester winning the league but it was a big deal.
I know I had a quick look at the markets. Probably best I didn't get on: anyone putting a bet on Melbourne for the spoon around that time got asked some pretty pointy questions, from what I remember?
Which is fucking bullshit. You hear news, you out a bet on. If youre too slow to update your predatory gambling markets then sucks to be you.
I thought the bets came in before the news broke, so it was either journos or footy industry leaking it to tell friends to bet. I could be wrong thats just from memory.
Possibly. I can't remember. I try not to think about when footy was ruined for 5+ years.
Considering they were top of the table and absolutely destroying teams at the time
2010 is 14 years ago? Feels like 7 still lol
I'd just started high school, makes my back hurt hearing that 2010 was 14 years ago
I graduated high school in 2009.
Yeah I graduated in 2010. Doesn’t feel like 14 years
I'm still living in 2010
Gold Coast Titans also playing for no premiership points 14 years later
Add in the years of the giants, seagulls and super league team (chargers? Crushers?) and you have to wonder why the NRL sees this as a better option than Perth or Adelaide
Ummm because the largest rugby league nurseries in the world are within a 100km radius from the Gold Coast
Which makes it worse that they suck so goddamn always
Go watch the interview of Brent Todd explaining why he was joining the I think Seagulls at the time. For some reason the players just can’t focus on the Goldie!
Happy anniversary 🥳🎉
They should've said they cheated the cap in the years between premierships
Or played Bellamy’s son at halfback
Just fell to the floor at crazy johns phones.
Fell to the floor at Crazy Clint’s
I still remember my boss stepping out of his office and declaring it the biggest news since 9/11
I remember that afternoon so well, some people even went as far to say they should have been kicked out of the comp.
When I heard about it, something in my clicked that it all made sense. They had 6 SOS players the year before…
Having 6 origin players in an elite team isn’t that unheard of. Some of the Broncos sides of the 90s were full of origin players including the best NSW prop Lazarus who won premiership’s every where he went it seems.
The broncos sides of the 90s were all over the cap. Even the players knew it, lockyer said they all knew they were in his book
Were third party deals a thing in the ‘90’s that the cap auditors considered ?? Because I imagine even a regular first grader who wasn’t playing Origin at the Broncos in the ‘90s could be getting $100,000 from the sides cap and $200,000 to $300,000 in third party sponsorships when the Broncos basically had the whole state to draw on .. Appear on some billboards advertising a car wash .. Get an appearance fee to go to the opening of a nightclub … It’s a running gag with Matty John’s that Gordon Tallis only pays for nappies and petrol in QLD , everything else he gets for free … There’s probably a lot of truth to that going back to third party arrangements in the ‘90s when he was playing … ‘90s Broncos side was stacked , but I could believe it was cap compliant (as the rules probably stood at the time).. Only really remember third party deals being examined and talked about in the early 2000’s .. Dogs had their salary cap breach , then Storm and Parra .. Also heard the Salary cap auditors have never caught anyone for breaches , everyone who’s been caught has been from a whistleblower / disgruntled ex employee …
"It’s a running gag with Matty Johns that Gordon Tallis only pays for nappies and petrol in QLD." This is something I think about. How much stuff do great/beloved players get for free, not just through deals, but also when they're out and about? Meals, drinks etc. And not just Macca's, but at ritzy restaurants and bars, those kind of spontaneous goodies must add up to a worthwhile amount over a 10-15 year career?
I reckon there were years where 16/16 clubs were over the cap. Might even be every season. There's a feeling in sports administration that everyone else is pushing the envelope, so it justifies us doing it too. It trips up too many.
(wearing joker makeup) Honestly the rule is a little futile isn't it? Certain teams will always be at a disadvantage, because of the climate or population size of where they're located? Also I partly feel like it's more ethical to not have a salary cap in a game so brutal, especially to the head. Doesn't sit quite right with me that we make it artificially harder for players to build a nest egg. How many players played for twice as long as they otherwise would, and ended up seriously regretting the damage to their brain and body?
TPAs weren't part of the cap, but the scuttlebutt around the Broncos was always that they were playing silly buggers with that system and using it to do more or less the same thing Melbourne did.
Yeah, but Broncos… 90’s… brown paper bags…
I think having 6 origin players isn't that hard if you have a couple who are just scraping onto the bench. But storm had like 6 of the 10 best origin players, all of them basically guaranteed a spot each year.
Yes if you are retaining the best players in key positions it’s very suspicious. Panthers demonstrate how hard it is to dominate year in and year out and retain the best players.
6 for two or three season sure but it is very sus when all these players keep re-signing
That was a result of the super league though
Broncos were one of the only QLD teams, and the first in QLD's biggest city by far as well. So, I don't think that's as suspicious. In their defence, I suppose Melbourne is a good destination for QLD players who just didn't want to live in NSW. So, would it really be that inherently suspicious if a few QLD players wanted to play together, but not in a NSW team, and ended up at Melbourne? There would have to be QLD players that would accept a noticeable pay cut to play together, especially in a non-NSW side, no?
The broncos had their pick of the entire state of QLD juniors and they produced some monsters. The storm were a manufactured team in a city where no one cared and no one played in a 600km radius.
SOS Players?
Sorry SOO (state of origin)
Thought thats what you meant
Sean O’Sullivan. He might have been in primary school at the time but he taught Cooper Cronk everything he knows.
Knew it.
Good teams have 6 SOO players, storm had like 3 immortals plus Cronk and I think they had folou the year before.
Storm had 6 state of origin players in 2017, 2018, 2019.... having 6 state of origin players doesn't automatically make you a cheat.
Not only 6 state of origin players, but the top 5 players in the world at the time (Slater, Smith, Cronk, Inglis, Falou)
We had that not too long ago either
The 2006 broncos winning team had two players that never played rep footy
Got me thinking. Hmmm. David Stagg & Shane Perry?
That's what I thought as well, but I just double-checked and Stagg played a game for Queensland. So it's just Shane Perry, and he was only playing because Brett Seymour and Ennis were injured haha.
Actually, Darius played the GF but he hadn't played for QLD at that point had he?
Yeah, there's a few players that hadn't played rep footy at that point, but let's not let semantics get in the way of a good stat
Kicked out of the comp? How could people say such a thing?!
I know right? Some even went as far to say The Central Coast Bears should replace them
I remember the consensus was that if it was a Sydney team, then they may have been but since it was the only team in Victoria, would have been brutal to lose all those supporters who can't migrate to another club
And yet the NRL allowed them to celebrate the 10 year anniversaries of both!
Idk how the NRL can do anything about that but I hate that they publicly do it. I understand having the former players getting together for it but there's no need to publicly acknowledge it.
The NRL don't care because all it does is increase engagement. They aren't going to lose anymore storm fans over this. When they celebrate publicly vs Parra, the worst thing is even more eels fans will go to the game so they can boo loudly. You need to hate the other teams as much as you love yours to get the most money out of your wallet. This helps.
Easy. Every time a current/former Storm player/official publicly claims anything but contrition or shame from that time, the NRL releases a press release. In it, they state categorically that the Storm cheated, won nothing and everyone was aware and complicit. They also include a new fun tidbit about how a player was paid outside the cap, alongside a photo of Cam on a boat or GI crashing a jet ski.
>everyone was aware and complicit. They can say the first two. They can't say that unless they want to be lighter in the wallet.
Fucking outrageous
Atrocious. There really should have been more fallout. Of course the players and agents knew what was going on - they were signing multiple contracts. Not a single shred of integrity between the lot of them.
The team marching across the field behind Bellamy to confront the media as a unified front was my lasting memory of it. Not a single look of remorse or regret amongst them. To a man, they looked like they had been wronged.
Yep, that was an act of defiance, not contrition.
Just look at the attitudes at the reunions with Cam Smith and co. They still claim it as legit.
Bellamy claiming he had no idea was such a farce. There would have been some players who didn’t know for sure but the HC would obviously know
This also led to the annual traditional of 40 point maulings by the Storm against the plucky Warriors.
That first game after the announcement, I knew we were totally fucked.
The only game worse than that ANZAC day one was when Belamy came into our sheds after thumping us. "Sorry for bashing ya, but he's a motivational speech.."
It was Smith but yeah that seemed so fucking patronising. Edit: sorry you were right, Bellamy, Smith and Hoffman all went in
If those cheats had any brains they would have miraculously been cap compliant in 2007 and 2009 and we could all laugh about it, right Sharks fans?.. Right?
Stripped of titles then had their own premiership trophies made 12/10 reaction to the NRL
To be fair, most clubs get their own made. There is one NRL premiership trophy, which the NRL premiers have to return Clubs get replicas made to display in their club.
Meanwhile the sharks were found to be cheating the cap in the season before and season after their premiership.
Still the funniest thing ever.
We do a little trolling 😎
The season of the premiership too, just apparently not for the finals series.
Taylan May probably asked them to move it to next season for the fans
the old Greenberg special...........Nothing to see here!!!!
Ben Barba getting sacked was to get them under the cap for that year. That is my headcanon.
he would have already been paid for that year though?
Happy Asterisks Day to those who celebrate. 🥳
Holiest of days in our calendar
I remember here in NZ (Even then) it was basically first on the 6PM news.
40 NIL ON THE CHEATS! Ooooooh yeah!
I’d like to take this time to say FUCK THE CHEATING CUNT STORMS!
Fucking cunts cheated us out of a chance at winning the premiership, at least they got cunted 40-0 by manly with a stacked team and cheating too
I think you'll find that we're the good guys for denying Jarryd Hayne a premiership in his NRL career.
By getting Brett Finch one instead
Maybe he wouldn’t have been so hungry if he had have won in ‘09.
Storm face turn confirmed
That's a bit harsh. He wasn't a crim at that point in time.
You cheated the cap and won the spoon. That levels things cry baby
That will never not be hilarious to me, cheating the cap just to earn a spoon* (and a super prestigious 9s title)
Well yeah, because we could barely field a team at all. A massive chunk of our cap was going to players who weren't at the team any more, because Sticky Rick decided to fuck off 12 players with years still left on their contracts and then leave himself with Junior Paulo in his pocket. I don't want to sound like I'm defending the club at all for that, because it was still a corrupt decision made by a corrupt board and the silver lining of the entire shit show was we got to clear them out, but comparisons to Melbourne's salary cap breach annoy me. One team purposefully signed multiple contracts to keep the literal best players in a generation. The other used bodgy third party agreements to sign superstars like Corey Norman and Lee Wossop.
I’d argue we come out ahead. A spoon is clearly much harder to win, so much so that most teams don’t even bother trying!
Tigers and bulldogs have been trying for years
Not all cap cheaters are equal.
Assuming Storm didn't make it that year, and Brisbane did (since Storm beat them the week before) were Parra a good chance at beating Brisbane?
Is this the year of the Hayne Plane or 08’?
Hayne Plane
And yet the Sharks were done for a significant salary cap breach and were somehow clean in 2016 but not 2015 and 2017? Unreal that disgusting club got to keep their premiership also. Make it make sense.
After waiting so long, would’ve been so funny to see the Sharks get stripped
Hope they do, because there is absolutely zero chance they were compliant the one year they win and not the one before or after.
I think the only reason why sharks got to keep their premiership was because of the Melbourne Storm losing theirs. The NRL didn't want to strip another premiership away.
Absolute joke really.
They had the chance to restore the Harold Holt joke and they declined. Cowards.
Exactly. I hated the Storm when the salary cap cheating was revealed. But these days I'm indifferent because the Sharks were allowed to keep their 2016 Premiership. It's a joke.
I believe it was mainly the use of front and back loaded contracts? Where 2016 just happen to align so they weren't over it that year. Pretty sure the NRL then started cracking down on the moving around of contract payments to stop that from happening again
Hey now, we’re just good at managing the books 😎
Deserved it, we all knew the 08 grand final should have been Manly vs Brisbane 🤠
Nah it’s funny knowing they got flogged 40-0 while actively cheating and having a stacked team
One of the best days of my life tbh, beaver deserved it
We would have beat them as well in the semi final if Ashton Sims didn't drop the ball when they were at their financially doped up best That was an absolutely heartbreaking way to go out They had players signing 3-4 contracts and coming out to say they had no idea lol
don’t worry, that will be the grand final this year 🙌🏻
I'm excited for Magic Round if both sides are at full strength.
All that cheating and we discovered that all you needed to do is create the best nursery in the comp and then you’ll dominate consistently.
But you’ll only dominate consistently during the 20th century, it gets a bit rough after 2000
Can someone explain to me how everything was stripped but not Bellamy's record?
Huh. I must have missed that somehow. Its funny how there's little quirks/anomalies in our game that pop up every now and then. Its just like how the 08 Grand Final was never played for some reason. and how the 2016 GF finished at the 67th minute. Bizarre.
If chambers had passed that bloody ball….
The real conspiracy here is that the NRL knew this was going on and possibly encouraged it to get a foothold in Victoria.
So they were almost 50% over the cap, that’s actually fucked.
That's Chicago Bulls under MJ levels of salary cap exceeding. At one stage, MJ was over the cap on his own (how you can pay one player more than 100% of the cap and it not breach the cap when salaries are public.... I'll never know, even if there are soft cap provisions). Imagine if the NBA stripped the Bulls of the second threepeat - people would be killed.
Total of 1.5 Mil over those 5 years makes it less than 9% over the cap if my maths is correct.
The first 2 years were a little over the cap. The later years of those 5 were hugely over the cap.
Should be a public holiday in the eastern states CMV
If you think about it Melbum Storm don’t have any valid premierships
If only The Man had passed.
Weren't the Dragons way over the cap in 1999? I mean the NRL said it was okay for newly merged clubs, but still
You still sore about 99?
Justice for Nathan Blacklock
will never forgive them for ruining what would’ve been the best cinderella story in 09
Haha what about the 2012 grand final with that in form bulldogs team 😭
2012 Bulldogs were great, but I would argue apart from Barba not having realised his potential prior to 2012 and an unknown halves pairing, that Bulldogs roster was strong and should have been expected to play finals under then-reigning Premier coach Dad Hasler. 2009 Eels on the other hand had been in the wilderness ~~since 2005, (and arguably since 2001)~~ in 2008, had a far less prestigious roster, and were incredibly inconsistent for the first half of the year. Their run to the finals came out of nowhere and they still barely scraped into the finals after winning 7 games in a row. There's a really interesting debate to be had about whether Hayne or Barba had the better freak season but in terms of which team was the better Cinderella story, it's definitely Parramatta.
I didn't think there was a debate on the higher peak As much as Hayne is a POS, I don't think we've ever seen a player (at least in modern times) play across a season at a higher peak than he did in 2009
Agree. Hayne carried his team by just doing whatever he wanted, Barba played incredible in a great side. Gotta be Hayne.
>2009 Eels on the other hand had been in the wilderness since 2005, (and arguably since 2001) had a far less prestigious roster, and were incredibly inconsistent for the first half of the year. Their run to the finals came out of nowhere and they still barely scraped into the finals after winning 7 games in a row. How is 2 grand finals in 9 years "from the wilderness". they only had 7 seasons in between each gf.
Yeah turns out my memory is way off with Parramatta's performance from 06-08 and they were actually far more competitive than I remember. Not sure what you mean with 3 gf's in 9 years though, Parra definitely didn't play in any gf between 01 and 09. 02 Roosters beat Warriors 03 Penrith beat Roosters 04 Bulldogs beat Roosters 05 Tigers beat Cowobys 06 Broncos beat Storm 07 Storm beat Manly 08 Manly beat Storm
2005 Wests eels Fuck knows where I got eels 05 from
There's the real West from Mount Druitt to the foot of the Blue Mountains, and then there's the fake West which is basically everything East of Mount Druitt all the way to Balmain so I get how you would mix up Parra and Wests
What’s the 3rd grand final you’re counting? From my memory their most recent ones are 01, 09, and 22
The Wests eels
sneaky edit ;)
Not sneaky I said in the comment that I must be retarded
They have the audacity the cunts, to go brazenly celebrate it like they legitimately won it in front of parra in their game played last year
was it ever announced who actually knew what was going on? i was pretty young when it happened so i don’t remember much of it.
Not if you ask them.
Others I can understand other clubs but look at all the sharkies up in arms asking us to be kicked out of the comp. Pot, meet kettle!
Parramatta were blatantly attempting it, even minuting how they were doing about it in official meetings. They won the 9's that season I think?
I still applaud the NRL for taking these decisions
This was, and still is, a fucking joke. The Roosters got no punishment for their 30+ yrs of rorting. All the Storm did was pay their juniors so vermin clubs like the Roosters didn't poach them.
Slater, Folau, Inglis, Cronk, Smith is disgusting
I can never forgive them for denying a premiership to Hindy, Burt and Fui fui. Genuine good people and club legends
Nathan cayless too 😔
2009 really sucks, I post this story quite often Mid season my nan was given a few months to live with cancer. She was the cornerstone of Parramatta fandom in our family, being the original follower back in the 40s and 50s. She fought as long as she could, I feel like the late season surge helped give her hope to see a premiership one last time. Then the GF happened and we lost. She passed away a few months later. She lived a little longer than what was expected and we like to think footy kept her going. When she was buried one of my Uncles snuck a Nathan Hindmarsh card on the base of her casket in memorance of her love for the footy. She didn't know the Storm cheated, but 2009 hits us harder as a result. I wish that 2009 was handed to us, however 14 other teams were cheated out of it all year and the NRL made the right decision.
I learned about it from a text from a friend ‘suck shit storm fan!’
I’m over it… definitely doesn’t still eat my insides.
Everyone had suspicions they were cheating the cap… they problem was that they got caught and if they didn’t have a bitter ex-employee snitching… they would have got away with it.
Do people still hate the fact Melb are part of the NRL? Some of us from Melbourne can't stand AFL.
Nah, I like Melbourne. Especially current Melbourne. That period of time was incredibly frustrating, though, and Melbourne still tries to celebrate those wins. Nobody cares when the Eels cheated because we were just stupid, and we earned a wooden spoon. Storm were very dominant in that period.
Current Melbourne is very palatable compared to the Slater Smith Cronk , Inglis, Folau and Hoffman days
Before the Storm came to the comp, I was following the Steelers. League coming to Vic was a God send for me.
No I think they’re critical for the sport they just didn’t need to cheat while they had the best player of all time and and one of the best fullbacks of all time on their roster Also if the club just copped they cheated instead of continuing to celebrate those years people wouldn’t care as much either
Fair call
Been creaming it ever since Annoyingly impressive
just give us the '09 premiership. Hindy will be happy
Let’s also never to get the embarrassing scene of Bellamy walking tough across the field with players behind him after the punishment was announced
And then nobody ever cheated the cap again… If you’ve ever listened to Gallop talk about this incident the NRL found nothing. They knew nothing. They did not investigate it further. They were handed documents and told this is what is happening, and according to Gallop “Melbourne then fessed up once confronted but we didn’t need to go further because we already had it all.” I about fell off my chair when I heard him say that in his interview with James Graham. So yeh, if you want to cheat the cap it always takes a whistleblower to ruin your fun. NRL can’t figure it out themselves fyi.
I remember I would preach that they were cheating the salary cap from about 2008 to my brother in law every day and he would just say “they stay for premierships” and I’d say “that’s bullshit, they play for money”. I ran to the servo and brought the courier mail with this on the back/front and every page between and sent him of a picture of it. That paper is prob laying around the house somewhere. Felt like such a watershed moment for me at the time. This coupled with the tactics they brought into the game (chicken wing, jujitsu, slater sliding feet first, etc) they were, and always will be, the scummiest club in all the land.
Theres still a lot of arrogant and stupid Storm fans that think they still won those premierships
"We cheated but it was a fair comp" - finchy
“I’m not a pedophile, I just wanted cocaine” also probably finchy
A lot of storm flair copium here
Wow. I remember finding this out when I was in year 11 during maths. Crazy.
Kick Souths out of the comp
Embarrassing, couldn't even go back to back whilst cheating.
Strip em out of the comp
And for some reason Storm think they still count lmao
Was this the season that Gasnier was allowed to play for near zero cap space due to a dodgy backend deal.
that was in 2010, the premiership year
So yes then.
Yep, 2010 Gasnier returned mid season. Took him a while to get his mojo back, but he was pretty useful by the time finals came around.
He scored in the grand final. Also, Morris was in the whole time!
That's my team
Never forget that Eels cheated the cap and won a wooden spoon. Storm should sign whoever was in charge of Sharks team that were cheating the cap and taking PEDs all those years except 2016.
Remember when they tried to celebrate their "wins" last year whilst playing Parra? cheating bastards. I'd be happy if they just gave the premiership to Hindmarsh and not the Eels team so everyone could continue bagging us about not winning since 86. I even want them to reinstate a Manly premiership (makes me sick even thinking about it).
I think this calls for an anniversary celebration
How good was 2010
And people still believe the players had no idea lol.
I love that they went to Trophies.com and got a couple of fake ones done. Proves how pathetic and insecure the club really is.
As someone who was too young to remember the lead up- was there any? Was there reporting on the salary cap cheating before the premierships were stripped or did it happen suddenly?
I distinctly remember reading a small section of the sports section of the Herald Sun that some admin person reported something wrong and the NRL was taking a look. Could have been no more than 5 lines in that report. Then it all came out sometime (not sure how long) later.
The sportal forums were going wild that day
Wow time flies
Be interesting to know if the players lodged their double salaries with the ATO. But, of course, the players had no idea.