its just been on the news that they have beem stripped of both the 2007 and 2009 grand final victories for cheating in regards to the salary cap

quote from adelaidenow.com...


MELBOURNE Storm has been stripped of their 2007 and 2009 NRL premierships and have been fined $1.6 million for long-term salary cap breaches.
The Storm have also lost their 2010 premiership points.

NRL chief executive David Gallop announced they would also not be allowed to accrue any premiership points in the 2010 season.

Gallop said the Storm had been found to have rorted the salary cap by at least $1.7 million over five years.

``They had a long term system of effectively two sets of books and the elaborate lengths they have gone through to cover this up has been extraordinary,'' said Gallop.

While Melbourne lost their titles from the 2007 and 2009 seasons Gallop said neither losing grand finalists Manly or Parramatta would assume those titles.

The Storm were also stripped of three minor premierships.


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``The club has furthermore been fined $500,000 and will be forced to return $1.1 million in prizemoney with the prizemoney being distributed evenly among the other 15 clubs,'' said Gallop.

Storm officials are in Sydney today discussing the outcome of NRL salary cap auditor Ian Schubert's investigation into player deals.

To run two sets of books is blatant cheating. I would not be surprised to see legal action.

if they cheated for 4-5 years, them give them no points for 4-5 years, this is not just an oversight, miss calculation, this is blatant cheating.. the robbing gits, and to think i paid all that cash to watch them in the final last year in sydney

I have to say that that is a fantastic decision by the NRL. The aim of the salary cap is to benefit the game as a whole. Melbourne clearly broke that to further their own ends.

It is a pity that the RFL do not have the same cojones over here.

On that basis would any teams who have won recent CC finals feel threatened

Shame the RFL didn't have the guts to come down harder on the Bulls and more so with Wigan who really took the mickey when they openly flouted the rules.

canterbury had the same thing 3 years ago?.. no points for cheating

It certainly fires a shot across the bows for anyone else who might be 'borderline' with their finances.

it says in the papers/press that they were due to overspend this year by $700.000... very much on the borderline

just watching foxsport news and they interviewed somebody from sportsbet australia.. our main bookies, and he said people last night were placing bets on storm to get the wooden spoon at 200-1 .. they didnt decide to put a stop to these bets till 13.00 today... 3 hours before the announcement, all bets made will be paid out at the end of the season , so somebody somewhere has made a killing on this issue with prior knowledge

No doubt people from Victoria!

Not being an expert, but with regards to the odds surely the bookies will come out with some form of get out clause for that? If not they could be paying out one hell of a fortune, as I bet a few people told their mates after getting a few bob on.

I wonder whether this will have repercussions with SL. We all know about the 'image rights' payments the VAT Man is clamping down on but I wonder if there are also Brown Envelopes floating around too...

The NRL have balls which the SL lost at day one
RL in this country is rotten to the core. l have watched RL for most of my 62 years, we at the Giants l believe are very fortunate to have a man like Davy running our club, others are not so blessed, l honestly believe most trophies won in SL era have been won by clubs cheating the cap. It has been said on many boards, how can this club or that club afford so many stars on 1.7 million, Brown evelopes, wives on the payroll, the Singapore accounts.
ln years gone by clubs were run by local businessmen, lots were spivs, and greedy wide guys playing the big man, in the last couple of decades they have mostly moved up a league.
look at the stadia, how much have these people actually invested in the sport? well done NRL, RFL ?????

Ouch !! naughty naughty boys !