What's quite strange is that every man and his dog is coming out saying it wasn't them and they're shocked from Bellamy all the way up to News Limited. One of them must be telling porkies.

Besides, if the players care as much as Bellamy seems to then they will skip these backhanders and earn their declared salary to get the Storm a Premiership in 2011.

Yuo have to ask what the NRL were doeing to not discover this 4 years ago unless it was covered up my melbourne i guess

EDITstored in a secret file at the home of the Chief Executive'"

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 -

rlhttp://www.thebaistand.com/index.php?option

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???

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

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.