NRL’s Jack de Belin bungle, Smith calls out Cronulla salary cap investigation
The NRL was having a bad week with its bungling of the Jack de Belin case and then Cameron Smith decided to double down on the game’s misery writes PAUL KENT.
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The NRL’s quiet defence of its manhandling of the Jack de Belin case is as embarrassing as the stuff-up itself.
It exposes the weakness up top. It is a cover-up. Something to mask their incompetency.
Nothing to see here, said Peter Beattie and Todd Greenberg. Who knew the law to suspend de Belin was a law in their minds only.
“There is no entitlement to stand him down from what you have told me,” Justice Stephen Rares said in Sydney’s Federal Court, courtroom 19E.
“The truth is, nothing is in place at the moment.”
The NRL shrugged it off.
According to their narrative, they knew all along there was no law written but Beattie and Greenberg said they always intended to have it place by kick off on March 14.
It is a strange logic.
Why, if the sport was competently governed, would the NRL leave its opening to the season vulnerable to the ticking time bomb of legal action in the 14 days between announcement and season kick-off?
Remember, the bold announcement to unlawfully stand down de Belin, delivered in statesmanlike style, was driven by the game seeking to protect its reputation. Forget the rules, this was about protecting the game.
Beattie said it himself: “What we are doing is to setting a benchmark and a standard to protect the game of rugby league.”
Yet they left the paperwork undone, the simplest of tasks. So it opened the way for de Belin’s legal action and the kind of damage to the game’s reputation they sought to avoid.
That they were prepared for this all along does not make sense.
Yet that is what they say.
Gets worse, though.
Within hours of the Federal Court debacle the game’s most powerful player, Melbourne captain Cameron Smith, doubled down on the NRL’s misery.
Smith was at the NRL season launch. A flash affair.
The NRL hired Bondi Icebergs to launch the season and coaches and captains flew in from around the country. The beer was cold and free and lightly touched.
Nothing was spared to finally get the season off on the right foot.
And then Smith hijacked the launch. He declared the NRL should give back the Storm their 2007 and 2009 titles because their cheating did not seem a whole lot different to when Cronulla cheated to win the 2016 premiership*, which the NRL confirmed last week.
No code causes as much self-harm as rugby league. It is an army in search of a general.
As the smoke cleared on Smith’s bombshell the NRL was quietly planting information to explain the de Belin catastrophe and distract fans while gaining public favour.
Part of the reason behind its $50 million profit for the year, it went, was because areas like the Integrity Unit were denied a $1 million request in budget and so there was not enough staff to immediately write in the new law.
Except the $50 million profit is in fact $46 million and later in the annual report, once adjusted profits are factored in, the profit comes down to about $8 million.
So forget that narrative. The bookkeeping is so complicated, and some believe deliberately so, nobody is quite sure what the adjustments represent.
And at the same time as the $1 million budget denial was being spruiked the NRL failed to acknowledge it already employs six in-house lawyers.
It gets worse.
The Integrity Unit has 18 full-time staff nobody, it seems, realised the need to prioritise the de Belin case as the most important integrity issue for the NRL and so get it done immediately.
Maybe they should hire Smith. At least he looks like he has his mind on the job.
CAM SMITH DOUBLES DOWN ON NRL MISERY
Smith’s complaint about the inequality of Melbourne’s penalty seems legitimate at first look.
The NRL revealed last week Cronulla cheated the salary cap with secret third party payments from 2013-18.
Yet instead of having their title stripped the message went out the Sharks did not cheat that much, so a fine and future sanctions would suffice.
How would it look of the game’s biggest Cinderella story, the Sharks finally winning a premiership* after 50 seasons, Harold Holt finally turning the porch light off, was stripped amid a salary cap cheating scandal?
Would the NRL, based on evidence, been capable of such a brave call?
Hmm.
Regardless, the code did a bad job of selling its decision. For reasons nobody can explain, even though rugby league is a publicly owned sport, head office acts like KGB headquarters.
Information is presented on a need to know basis and it seems the League believes fans need to know very little.
It makes you wonder whether so many lies have already been told they fear coming clean in case the whole house of cards comes crashing down.
NRL Integrity unit boss Nick Weeks was careful and deliberate when discussing Cronulla’s premiership* season.
Several times, almost word perfect each time, he said the Sharks were “cap compliant on the day they won the premiership*”.
It is true, if not exactly right.
The way it worked was simple.
Cronulla was legally spending below the salary cap in 2016. At the same time, illegal third party payments were being made and not disclosed.
The Sharks were “cap compliant” because the secret amounts being paid to the players did not take them over the salary cap limit.
But they still cheated.
And the knock-on benefit for the Sharks seems not to have been considered inside KGB headquarters.
Premierships are not won in single seasons. They are won by strong rosters assembled over several years. So based on the NRL’s limited release of information Cronulla was four years into their cheating when they won their title*.
The third parties were illegally obtained and gave Cronulla an unfair advantage in the years that followed - “The club embarked on a program that begun in earnest in 2017 to set up a structure to procure third-party agreements to players,” Weeks said - because the premiership they illegally won brought in more sponsors so they could legally afford to spend nearer to the cap limit, while also secretly benefiting from their cheating program.
And yet the NRL feels justified to let the Sharks retain their premiership*, which is forever tainted.
Cronulla was treated differently to Melbourne because the Storm was well over the cap on its grand final days in 2007 and 2009.
“The most we were over in one season was $500,000,” Smith said, without even a blush.
Smith used a solid logic based on the information known.
But that is the problem. It is only ever partial information.
Smith has no idea how much Cronulla cheated the cap to win their premiership.
Nobody does, and so nobody wins.
*Cheated the salary cap
Originally published as NRL’s Jack de Belin bungle, Smith calls out Cronulla salary cap investigation
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