Melbourne Storm should stop complaining about their stripped NRL premierships

THE Storm should stop complaining publicly about having had the 2007 and 2009 titles stripped for them for salary cap cheating.

Melbourne Storm captain Cameron Smith will play his 200th Storm game on Sunday against Cronulla — Playing are first game after the salary cap scandal with Ryan Hoffman and Billy Slater

THE Storm should stop complaining publicly about having had the 2007 and 2009 titles stripped for them for salary cap cheating.

By all means use it as motivation for the team, as they have done for the seven years since they paid in spades for salary cap violations when the NRL were alerted to a “second set’’ of books for player payments.

But for coach Craig Bellamy to keep saying, as he did at a 10-year reunion of players in late July, that the “wrong thing was done’’ only blackens the eye of rugby league one more time for a misdemeanour over which the Storm, as an organisation, had total control.

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Storm players celebrate victory after the 2009 grand final.

Sunday’s grand final program devotes two pages to an honour roll of grand finalists and award winners since 1908.

It carries for the years 2007 and 2009 “P’ship withdrawn’’.

The runners-up column for both 2006 and 2008 — years in which the Storm lost grand finals — both carry the word “withdrawn”.

Many of us in Queensland love the Storm for 100 reasons.

We admire their skills and can personally aspire to their resilience, organisation, doggedness and discipline, year after year.

But that doesn’t get away from the reality that David Gallop, then the NRL CEO, got it right in 2010 when he agitated within the league and its directors for the Storm to retrospectively pay for the club’s cheating.

Melbourne still carry the scars of that time. AFP Photo/William West

The decision is still right, partly because there has been no salary cap violations since, which required such stringent action by the NRL.

The deterrent laid down on that tumultuous day is born by mind by every club official who tinkers over salary cap budgets ever since.

The Storm had two premierships erased as well as being refused the chance to earn any competition points during the 2010 season.

“If you look at the penalties put on that team compared with the penalties put on other teams then I think everyone would agree it was harsh,’’ Bellamy said in July.

“They can say what they like and erase what they like, but they are not going to erase these guys’ memories of what they did in 2007.’’

Melbourne Storm captain Cameron Smith will play his 200th Storm game on Sunday against Cronulla — Playing are first game after the salary cap scandal with Ryan Hoffman and Billy Slater

Cooper Cronk said this week that 2007 and 2009 count for plenty in his opinion, even though he was more willing than his coach to say that his club was at fault.

“To be honest, it is what it is, the club did the wrong thing, the sanctions were handed down, but I still have the DVDs at home that I will watch every and now and then if I forget about us winning those premierships,’’ Cronk said.

Did the Storm management late last decade need to rort the system to such an extent, which allowed them to keep all of the “Big Four’’ and so many of the supporting cast?

The Storm won the competition in 2012 with a “Big Three’’ – Greg Inglis having left for South Sydney for the 2011 season. So it would have been possible to have success without the banished Storm CEO Brian Waldron having presided over spending that was not so cheeky.

Originally published as Melbourne Storm should stop complaining about their stripped NRL premierships