"Let sleeping dogs lie," was how one ARL commissioner justified a board decision to reaffirm the 2010 sanctions against the Storm for salary cap breaches, following a nine-month review of the case by the NRL's integrity chief Nick Weeks.
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Now, the "dog" has come back to bite the NRL because the penalty against the Eels for salary cap cheating is expected to be significantly lighter than the Storm's, despite the size of the Melbourne over-spending being considerably less than Parramatta's.
Weeks was given a brief by former NRL boss Dave Smith to benchmark the Storm penalties against more recent breaches by other NRL clubs, including a mystery $300,000 payment at the Broncos.
His season-long forensic investigation, interrupted persistently by the multiple issues that confront a chief of integrity in rugby league, was that the Storm's breach in 2007 was between $300,000 and $400,000.
Weeks' recommendation, backed by Smith, was to let the Melbourne penalties stand and the ARLC took about 10 seconds to endorse this at a board meeting late last year.
But this decision was made before the full extent and motive for Parramatta's salary cap excesses were known.
Initially, Weeks believed the Parramatta breaches were inadvertent, the result of incompetence.
Furthermore, the Eels had no silverware to lose. Do you punish a club by taking away its wooden spoon?
The ARLC decision to endorse the recommendation of Weeks/Smith to allow the Storm sanctions to stand was made at a time the code was under attack from Rupert Murdoch for signing a free-to-air broadcasting deal with Channel Nine, freezing News Corporation out of negotiations.
No wonder the commission didn't want to awake the Melbourne "dog" put down by the David Gallop administration with the complete agreement of News Ltd, which owned both the club and half-owned the NRL.
The truth is the dog was never asleep.
A powerful and wealthy coterie of Melbourne supporters has been seething for years over the draconian sanctions, including the stripping of two premierships, three minor premierships, sacking of players, a $500,000 fine, the return of $1.1million in prize money and a World Club Challenge trophy and forced to play for no points in 2010.
Peter Maher, one of the Storm directors sacked by News before it could take court action to overturn the penalties, early last year approached Melbourne-based commissioner Graeme Samuel, who is aware of the residual anger in the southern capital against the excessive penalties.
Samuel spoke to Smith who instructed Weeks to identify the size of the breaches, particularly in 2006 and 2007, rather than the process where Gallop's administration decided on the penalty in under one hour.
(Smith reasoned that because none of his new administration was in Gallop's office when the decision was made, he could not rule on process).
He did feel entitled to review a punishment if it was at odds with later sanctions at other clubs for greater excesses.
However, an NRL CEO has widespread powers under the salary cap rules to impose penalties and Weeks, a lawyer, considered it a bad precedent to unpick the work of a previous administration.
Furthermore, he reasoned that a legal challenge was unlikely given that five years had passed since the sanctions were handed down and potential plaintiffs, former Storm players such as Dallas Johnson who lost premiership rings, would not have the monetary resources to take on the NRL.
Ironically, the rich Parramatta club has threatened court action for not being afforded "natural justice and procedural fairness", the very grounds that Maher and his co-directors at the Storm were pursuing when sacked by club owners News Ltd.
When it was put to Weeks that the Storm breaches were principally for guaranteeing third party deals – now allowed to the extent of $800,000 a season via the Marquee Player Allowance – Weeks correctly pointed out an administration can only deal with the laws as they exist at the time. (Of the total MPA's across the NRL's 16 clubs, 90 per cent are now guaranteed by the clubs).
However, there is another reason why the Gallop administration sought to crush the Storm and the Smith/Greenberg administration have been reluctant to put down Parramatta.
No one in a position of power will admit it but football bosses like to share the trophies around, particularly when a former powerhouse with a strong fan base comes back from the dead.
The Storm won too much silverware from 2006 (minor premiers but lost the grand final to the Broncos, to the 2009 premiership, with the 2008 minor premiership in between.
Maher has engaged a Sydney sports lawyer ahead of Tuesday's NRL decision on Parramatta.
