{NRL} Melbourne cooked the books!

[Jiminee]

EVERY NRL club does it..

The system encourages it..

While the AFL encourage and condone it! Never understood the whole 'living in Sydney is more expensive' justification for giving them more money. Of course that is just an excuse, the AFL wanted them to be successful for the own financial good but the NBA has no such rules even though many teams (Phoenix, Orlando, Miami) can use the 'no income tax in this state' to attract players. No coincidence that those States are also the retirement capitals in the USA! The income tax on $10 mill a year would be pretty epic to!

[Dr. Pain]

I hope they keep the motivation up and spank everyone

[Rots]

Actually I don't think they should play or they should at least have a handicap of some form. It's not fair on those teams, who are actually playing within the rules (or yet to be caught), to be against a team that is still cheating as the Storm's player worth is still above the salary cap.

[Montey]

If I was the Storm's management I'd write the season off, have a significant rotation system in place for my lead players and then be using a lot of of hot-prospect juniors. That way I get to have the majority of the season to talent scout and try out for the following season and potentially get them under contract.

Since the Storm have already been penalised for breaching the salary cap and they can hardly get more penalised than they are already for exceeding it, here's what I'd do:
- Find as much young talent as possible. Look for absolutely anyone who might reveal themselves to be a super star, from anywhere in the world.
- Put them all on contracts until the end of the season with a 1 or 2 year option to extend the contract at the clubs exclusive discretion.
- Commit to give each of the talented youngsters a certain number of 1st grade games so they get to expose themselves to the other teams in case their options don't get taken up.

This way the Storm gets first pick of all the new up-and-comers; gets to reject anyone who doesn't work out; gets to keep any of the super star juniors to replace any of the current 1st team who have to be offloaded to meet the salary cap for next year; and potentially get to use any super stars that can't be kept for various reasons in trade deals with other clubs.

(This all presumes the NRL recruitment rules allow such things... I don't know enough about the NRL to know).

[Jiminee]

How can they put them on contracts though and fit them under their already blown out of the water cap? How many youngsters would trust them? Are there any gun youngs guys already not tied to clubs?
Also, they now have serious income problems I am guessing with sponsors jumping off left and right and the owner's are unlikely to be in the mood to throw more money at an operation that may have a limited future.
From a sporting sense the ideas make tons of sense but business wise I think they would be impossible.

[Montey]

How can they put them on contracts though and fit them under they're already blown out of the water cap? How many youngsters would trust them? Are there any gun youngs guys already not tied to clubs?

Blowing the salary cap and getting penalised to the extent the Storm have been is a bit like getting rained on. Once your soaked to the bone you can't really get any more wet. Since the Storm have already been penalised in to oblivion for the current season they can't really be punished for become more over the salary cap.

Also, they now have serious income problems I am guessing with sponsors jumping off left and right and the owner's are unlikely to be in the mood to throw more money at an operation that may have a limited future.
From a sporting sense the ideas make tons of sense but business wise I think they would be impossible.

I would have agreed with you except that News Ltd owns the Storm and have been prepared to lose a tonne of cash on them already. The only way the Storm are going to be competitive next year is if they can bring in some cheap stunning talent, and that means current unknown super stars, and the best time to find them is right now.

[Jiminee]

Fair enough but I would not like to be the Storm official trying to explain to the NRL that they need to spend more money this year! I just can't see that going down very well.
Also, I am not that familiar with how the lower leagues of the NRL work but as in most sports surely the gun talent is identified before the guys leave high school. I know there is no NRL draft so I would imagine they get locked into development squads, Under 18s (which was televsied on Fox at one stage right?) and Reserve league pretty quick. I would think that free agent junior talent would be pretty slim pickings.
Aren't some of the NSW based teams junior clubs more financially sound than the seniors or has that passed? Was it South Sydney that were propped up by the juniors before the Russell Crowe era began?