Wests Tigers’ CEO debacle shows NRL salary cap needs cleaning up
Wests Tigers have vowed to fight for their CEO and $750,000 fine in a case that will go to the heart of the NRL’s salary cap and end the inconsistencies that have damaged so many clubs.
Opinion
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No wonder rugby league fans are fed up.
Wests Tigers chief executive Justin Pascoe is fighting to save his job and his reputation.
His club has been fined $750,000 and had a further $639,000 deducted from next year’s salary cap.
All because the Tigers didn’t disclose a post-retirement ambassadorial role that was offered to Robbie Farah.
Yet it was OK for Melbourne to walk through the NRL’s front door so Cameron Smith could have a testimonial match with all the bells and whistles, a full three seasons before Smith retires.
Smith is currently negotiating a new contract with the Storm, to play until the end of 2020, and these negotiations are a full season after his testimonial game with Johnathan Thurston.
Some people will say that comparing these two is like judging apples with oranges.
But in the most simple of terms, what separates them, from the NRL’s perspective is that one was declared, scrutinised and passed a stringent series of criteria for eligibility and the other wasn’t.
The Tigers insist the only reason they didn’t declare Farah’s deal was because they didn’t know they had to declare it.
The NRL take an entirely different view, that the Tigers attempted to deceive the governing body to gain a competitive salary cap advantage.
Several other NRL clubs have had ambassadorial roles for players approved because they disclosed them to the league.
We will wait and see if Pascoe can defend his side of the story.
But the Tigers, as a club, have vowed they are going to back their boss, and take up this fight.
It should be a beauty, because at the heart of all this is the salary cap’s credibility.
A system Todd Greenberg maintained this week was “very simple and easy to understand”.
In actual fact, the salary cap book was originally 250 pages when published but has since had many more amendments.
Some clubs claim the salary cap rules are not as “simple” as Greenberg and integrity unit chief, Nick Weeks, make out.
It was only last week Weeks sat in a room with journalists, after revealing the entire list of third party payments at all NRL clubs and conceded that there were still some clubs out there who didn’t understand the salary cap rules.
Still clubs know if they’re unsure over a salary cap issue one phone call to the NRL will clear up and doubts.
Coincidently, that list of third-party incomes made many in the game choke with laughter.
But if the league really wants to win back credibility as far as the salary cap is concerned it’ll need to do more than hit a club like the Tigers with a sledgehammer.
Because faith in the current system is at an lowest.
It is time the rules were put in place that left absolutely no room for any misinterpretation or ignorance.
All payments should be transparent.
All payments.
Publish individual salaries.
Publish individual third party deals.
And the money Smith and Thurston raked in for their testimonial.
The game can’t afford to keep rolling from one salary cap disaster to the next, year after year.
It is vital to stamp out the cheats.
The integrity of the competition depends on the salary cap.
But since 2015 we have had six different clubs issued with salary cap breach notices and probably only Parramatta was a clear-cut case of blatant cheating.
Earlier this year Manly owner Scott Penn, like the Tigers now, was adamant his club was only guilty of a misunderstanding.
Clarity will clear all the confusion.
Because what we have right now is a system that seems as convoluted as it is inconsistent.
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Originally published as Wests Tigers’ CEO debacle shows NRL salary cap needs cleaning up
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