It is 13 years (has it really been that long?) since David Gallop’s announcement of Melbourne Storm’s unprecedented eviscerating punishment for salary cap breaches.

The removal of 2 premierships, 3 minor premierships, and a World Cup Challenge title, a fine the equal of the breach amount, and virtual elimination from the 2010 competition.

It was a shocking and mesmerising time, for its illuminating expose of the worst aspects of human nature. At its heart was deceit but more compelling were the many unhinged responses.

Last week, the Storm returned to the Docklands stadium, the scene of their first game after the sentence was handed down.

I went to that game and, as Craig Bellamy noted recently, didn’t expect anyone to turn up. It was made more significant after the team’s dramatic walk towards the cameras at the recently completed AAMI Park earlier in the week.

As a Storm supporter it was difficult to excuse the rorting and to allay fears it was the cause of the success of the early Bellamy era. We walked into the stadium with a sense of guilt and dread but also exhilaration. It was still us versus them.

As far as the premiership was concerned the team’s thumping of the hapless Warriors was meaningless.

But as a unique phenomenon (no team had ever played for no points) and as a fortifying moment for a team expressing their shock and anger towards those administrators responsible for the rorting, and as a response to the hate they endured – at a level not seen before, or since despite several teams being found guilty of extensive breaches – it was exhilarating.

Let’s return to the afternoon of 22nd April, 2010 as Gallop, without board approval or full knowledge of the details of the breaches, methodically removed all of Bellamy’s team’s achievements.

The media labelled it the darkest day in Australian sport. Storm chairman Rob Moodie thought he needed to apologise to the ‘Australian people’.

Others made comparisons with infamous US scandals such as Watergate, referring to the deceit as Stormgate. The club’s owner News Ltd.’s Daily Telegraph compared it to baseball’s Chicago Black Sox match fixing affair. 

That day has also been referred to as ’22/4′. It seems absurd and disrespectful, to equate that press conference with the truly horrific sight on ‘9/11′ of two planes melting into the Twin Towers, the immediate dread of knowing the fate of those vaporised inside and onboard and the vision of those at the buildings’ edges with the awful choice between staying and burning, or leaping into the relief of cool air on an appalling plummet to the pavement.

But the analogy can be justified, such was the numbing shock, disbelief, despair and chaos inside the Storm changerooms when the inner circle of coaching staff and players were told the news.

Storm supporters too were stunned. The fairy tale had ended. We refer to rare and wonderful moments as fairy tales, forgetting that they often involve deception betrayal and gruesome death. More obviously,  they’re not real.

Before the public announcement, Craig Bellamy was given the job of informing the playing group. According to journalist Paul Kennedy in Storm Cloud, his account of the saga, Bellamy wasn’t up to it: “The coach, dripping a few sentences, began crying  and could not finish. (Frank) Ponissi stepped in and completed the task. Some players (including Cameron Smith) broke down. Perhaps the worst thing was seeing Bellamy so crushed.”

And then the encroaching menace from outside.

It was the response from the media and opposition clubs, players and fans. Some of it was measured, but mostly it was zealous and hysterical.

Fairfax was understandably keen to savour the opportunity to criticise a team owned by their main competitor.  Worse, for Storm, was the response from their owner.  Immediately after Gallop’s grim sentencing, News Ltd.’s executive chairman John Hartigan, who like Gallop was not fully aware of the details of the scam and was deeply suspicious of the players’ and coach’s involvement, was quick to  condemn the “rats in the ranks” and stress his non involvement in the scam and his revulsion at what had taken place (“I feel sick in the stomach”).

The abuse of the salary cap can be described in several ways depending on your knowledge of events, point of view and level of blind passion. The severest would be, well, ‘abuse’, and ‘cheating’ followed by ‘rorting’, the official and almost heroic sounding ‘breach’, the one more suited to sexual impropriety (‘scandal’), and the essentially blameless ‘over the salary cap’. 

There’s no doubt the brutality of the punishment meted out to the Storm was partly fuelled by revenge and resentment for their unexpected unbelievable and enviable achievements. Also, the excellence of their deception was  embarrassing for the NRL.

The sanctions were supported and vociferously defended by all club bosses at the time, out of anger and moral outrage, no doubt, but probably also out of relief that the Storm’s dominance over them wasn’t a result of greater professionalism, recruitment, coaching and team bonding.

Unsurprisingly, the pronouncements were led by Rabbitoh’s chief Shane Richardson who continued his influential anti-Storm crusade well after the punishments had been served, preparing dossiers for the NRL and match committee on the dangers of Storm’s wrestling techniques and its un-aesthetic slow play the balls, as his team continued its appalling record against their Southern Menace.

Some opposition supporters hoped that it meant the end of the club. “Let’s face it, Melbourne Storm are a failed experiment that burnt brightly for a brief time due to success achieved through illegal means”, one confidently remarked.

Anger towards teams involved in cheating is normal and understandable.

But here was an overreach of revulsion – not seen before or since in response to other clubs’ major breaches – common in the early stages of a revolution.

In his autobiography Cameron Smith described the treatment given to the players at away games: “It was abuse I never thought was possible at a rugby league game. You always expect banter but this was on another level.”

Arriving at grounds, they were confronted with crowds resembling the cast from a Federico Fellini movie. Faces – distorted with rage, spat on them, young children mimicked their parents’ verbal obscenities.

They famously had money thrown at them by fans in Canberra.  At the return match at AAMI Park I was sitting next to a group of young vocal Raiders fans who had the audacity – and courage, I suppose, considering they were in enemy territory –  to hold a sign with ‘cheaters’ in large letters. I leant over and mentioned their club was the first major rorter of the NRL salary cap. They were a little taken aback, possibly unaware of the fact. They watched the rest of the match in relative silence.

It’s obvious that Storm’s brutal punishment did not fulfil its primary function of deterring others from cheating.  

The most intriguing and ironic case is that of Cronulla in 2019. They were found to have been orchestrating illegal payments between 2014 and 2017, including 2016 when they beat Melbourne, of all teams, to win the premiership. It was also found that a company had been established in 2017 to ‘ramp up’ illegal third party payments. Bizarrely, despite all this, they were allegedly below the cap in 2016 so the NRL decided not to strip them of the title.

I think the decision to move on quickly and avoid the sort of extensive audit the Storm received was based on the knowledge that to remove Cronulla’s premiership would have been catastrophic. This was a fairy tale that had to remain real for struggling clubs and the NRL.

Certainly the conciliatory approach by Todd Greenberg towards those Sydney clubs –  such as negotiating punishments, discounting fines for partial disclosure and even expressing sympathy for the clubs and players – has further fortified the Storm players in their desire to recognise the ’07 and ’09 titles that have been asterisked, Liquid Papered out, or deleted from the digital record. They return for heartfelt anniversary celebrations, and ignore the criticism.

The following year , in an instance of happenstance Gallop presented the Storm with the J.J. Giltinan Shield in Melbourne on the 10th anniversary of the September 11 attacks. He was booed vociferously by the crowd emboldened by the belief that the minor premiership was proof that the rorting hadn’t been the reason for the club’s success.

Unbelievably, continuing the ‘9/11 parallel, he responded by calling them terrorists.

So, what have we learned from the madness of 2010 and since?

Perhaps that rorting is inevitable.

The middle aged protagonist of a Philip Roth novel, who was contemplating the inevitable loss of his younger lover, says: ” A young man will find her and take her away. And from me, who fired up her senses, who gave her her stature, who was the catalyst to her emancipation and prepared her for him”.

It’s the nagging fear and feeling of resentment felt by those clubs who identify and develop young talent which become recruitment  targets for those  who have, as Norman Mailer would describe, “an aristocratic indifference to the development of talent Enjoyed what was in flower, but left the planting to others”.

It was the reason Brian Waldron gave for Melbourne’s salary cap breaches. It wasn’t an excuse, of course, but it illuminated the forces behind the impulse to rort.

Businessman Paul Stoddart expressed it perfectly when reflecting on his F1 Minardi team’s performance  at the 2002 Melbourne Grand Prix: “No question, the happiest time of my life. I’ve sold businesses for a lot of money. NOTHING touches that Sunday in March, 2002.”

Sport is about winning. It’s an exhilarating and powerful feeling not always compatible with – or respectful of – the socialist concept of the salary cap.

What was most significant though about ’22/4′ were the dark unsettling feelings sport is capable of unleashing. They’re not apparent on the tv coverage with its focus on happy families and sterilising the sound of the crowd to favour the commentators’ voices.

They’re feelings I’m not always aware I have, and when they come I’m not always capable of fully suppressing them.

I’ll leave the description in the hands of the late Martin Amis: “A mass hysteria comes over you and I’m invaded by the emotions of religion and war. I hate the opponents and I love my team. It’s shameful that that’s real”.

Published on sports website The Roar:-
https://www.theroar.com.au/2023/07/13/did-the-nrl-overreact-to-the-2010-melbourne-storm-salary-cap-scandal/

In Thrilla In Manila (2008) – a film about the third and last bout between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier in 1975 – Ali’s own biographer and Pulitzer Prize nominee Thomas Hauser said: “In the ring Joe Frazier and Muhammad Ali were the equal of each other yet today Ali has sold the use of his name and likeness for fifty million dollars. Joe is living in a room above his gym in Philadelphia. That’s an interesting look at how America treats its sporting icons. Some are accorded special status. Others are largely forgotten”.

America, sucked in by the charismatic showman and shameless self promoter Ali, forgot all about poor Smokin’ Joe.

They forgot what he did to the World’s Greatest Athlete in Madison Square Garden in March 1971 when he exposed a weakness in Ali’s armoury, opening him up with vicious left hooks. They forgot about it because Ali and his trainer Angelo Dundee claimed Frazier’s points decision victory was a sham – reflecting the white bias towards him.

It was during the Thrilla In Manila four years later that Ali felt, for the first time in his career, that he was going to die. That was enough to make it the greatest fight ever. But there was much more to it than that.
Some critics claim the film is compromised by director John Dower’s use of this fight to denigrate Ali with its focus on his activism, involvement with the Nation of Islam and treatment of Frazier.

But some of the lines uttered in this doco – a superb depiction of boxing and human nature – are as devastating as the hits dished out by the two immortal heavyweights.

Ali’s physician and cornerman Ferdie Pacheco had never had cause to be concerned for his client’s welfare until that unbearably hot and humid morning of October 1st, 1975 inside the Araneta Colosseum in the Philippines. After dominating a “washed up” Joe Frazier in the early rounds Ali suddenly found himself in serious trouble. Frazier started to work over Ali’s brain and other vital organs during six rounds of brutal left and right hooks, and shuddering body blows.

After the fifth round Ali was no longer taunting Frazier with nursery rhymes, and after the tenth – his bright mocking eyes dulled by pain, exhaustion and internal bleeding (he would soon be peeing blood) – he confided ringside: “This is what death must be like”.

Throughout, Ali resurrected himself once, Frazier twice. And then after the fourteenth round when Ali had had enough and was asking his trainer to end it, Frazier’s threw in the towel.

Hauser said “Great fights between great fighters are few and far between”, and when those fighters are heavyweights, people who claim not to like boxing come to watch.

Norman Mailer observed that when Ali appeared in public “women draw an audible breath. Men look down”. On television the charisma is not as apparent. In fact it was Frazier (the “ugly gorilla” as Ali unforgettably and unforgivably called him) who most resembled cinemas’ first black action hero, the ruggedly handsome Shaft

You see, as the documentary makes clear from the opening, the fight was personal. Frazier resented Ali; , they had once been close friends. Frazier had lent Ali money when he was banned for boxing for refusing to serve in Vietnam and Frazier actively petitioned for the reinstatement of Ali’s licence.

When the Supreme Court lifted the ban and the Madison Square Garden fight was set up the relationship changed dramatically. Ali was a renowned witty taunter of opponents that served to put them off their game and to increase interest in the fights. He was an invigorating presence in a deadly earnest profession.

He chose to give his one time friend searingly cruel and personal insults, referring to him as a “fat-nosed ugly pug” and absurdly labeling him a black traitor because of his white business interests. Later, would come the insult usually attributed to racist whites: “Gorilla”.

The narrator explains Ali’s motives: “Of the forty-nine fighters Muhammad Ali fought during his twenty year career Joe Frazier was the one he feared the most. And Ali did everything he could to unsettle him”.

Frazier was clearly shaken by the outbursts. Lacking Ali’s verbal facilities he was unable to counter the insults by pointing out Ali’s hypocritical lifestyle. Instead, his friend’s betrayal burning inside him, he grew to hate Ali. So much so that even during the film – thirty-three years after the Thrilla In Manilla – he revels in the possibility that God and the battering he gave Ali between rounds five and ten are responsible for Ali’s degenerative condition.

It seems Ali’s ugly tirades had unearthed something ugly in this once genial giant.

Only Joe Frazier, it seems, knew what was coming in the Philippines. Ali had sensationally knocked out George Foreman the previous year in The Rumble In The Jungle and seemed to be at the top of his game.

Frazier,on the other hand, had been battered senseless by Foreman inside two rounds and was thought by Ali to be finished.

Ali spent the days cavorting with his mistress and making public appearances. Frazier, with a single minder, escaped to the outskirts of Quezon City to train, focus and nurture his resentment.

As early as the fighters’ entrance things started to get out of kilter for Ali. The Filipinos had tired of his verbal taunts and began to boo him. Ali showed mock outrage, carrying the trophy to his corner. It’s hard to believe, watching that pantomime now, what was to follow.

Ali believed he could end it inside five rounds. Trying to exploit Frazier’s renowned slow starts Ali spurned his dancing, and walked straight on in. For the first three rounds the world saw the greatest looking fighter at his best – the aesthete of combinations – as he worked on Frazier’s face. Ali’s ferocious pace didn’t allow his opponent to get under and in, like he had in New York.

It went on for three rounds but as his cornerman relates: “Ali, for some reason couldn’t do it, He was hitting him with the best hits he could and it wasn’t hurting… as much as it should”.

Then in the fourth Frazier found Ali with a right, and then another. Someone says: “I didn’t think Joe could tie his shoes with his right hand. Suddenly Ali is thinking there are two hands in this fight. That was very important”.

And so began the assault on Ali’s person as Frazier expressed his hatred upon his opponent’s heart, liver and kidneys. “He wasn’t just beating Ali. He was beating Ali ..up! Big difference”, says Hauser.

Even Imelda Marcos, the wife of a dictator and probably no stranger to distressing noises, couldn’t bear to watch “because you could hear the sounds. When the fists would land.”

Ali was unmarked but not unaffected. He was bleeding inside but more importantly the hooks he had absorbed from the shorter more powerful Frazier were caught on the up, striking his chin and jaw – throwing his head back and forcing his brain against the inside of his skull.

Frazier may have had the swollen visage but the damage was more cosmetic. Ali’s jabs and straight rights had hit him flat; his face and pylon-thick neck disseminating the shock.

There are stills from that first bout in New York ,”The Fight of the Century”, showing Frazier staggering Ali in the eleventh round and then knocking him down in the fifteenth. Frazier’s left arm and shoulder having completed their brutal task are following through and just as prominent are his muscular thighs: the starting point of the thunderbolt’s power.

Ali was the taller man – more mobile, slimmer, and with a longer reach. But there’s a price to pay for those advantages: a lack of power and a jaw vulnerable to attack. Ali was the most complete heavyweight boxer there had ever been but his power deficit and susceptibility to Frazier’s greatest weapon , the left hook, cost him their first confrontation and should have cost him their third.

But just as Frazier had done in the early rounds, Ali somehow survived the ordeal and began slowly to get back into the contest. By the thirteenth, Frazier, who was nearly blind in the left eye, was having trouble seeing out of his right. He was beginning to absorb Ali’s straight punches again.

Then came the fourteenth.

“If you had to say what’s the attraction of boxing you’d show them round fourteen. Do you want to see what makes people come and scream and holler? Look at round fourteen”, said Pacheco.

A correspondent believed “it was the most brutal of the fourteen rounds. There are five or six times when Ali throws combinations where you expect Joe to fall. And he staggers… but his will keeps him up”.

Pacheco said it was “the closest he’d seen somebody come to killing somebody”.

Before the start of the final round, the swollen face of Frazier can be seen arguing with trainer Eddie Futch. Ali, his face relatively unscathed, looks exhausted and has ordered Angelo Dundee to cut off his gloves. When Futch ends the fight Ali looks in shock. He rises slowly to celebrate but is soon on his back being attended to.

Frazier would fight twice more, and then retire to the room in his gym with the cans of corn and Campbell’s Chunky soup.

Ali’s doctor said his man should never have boxed again: “He was pissing blood. He can’t walk straight, he can’t talk straight, he can’t see straight … but he wanted to keep going”.

He would go on to fight ten more bouts against mainly unheralded boxers, winning seven. He would lose his second last against ex sparring partner Larry Holmes. Holmes described it as “like taking candy from a baby”.

Ali held most of his fellow boxers – poor, uneducated, witless, unimaginative, “victims of circumstance” – in contempt because boxing was all they knew, and cared about.

Ali wanted to be more than a boxer. He wanted to be an artist, a wit, an intellectual,an entrepreneur, an activist – a man in control of his destiny. He would go on to be a wealthy, worldly and idolised man, and yet he continued to box, probably damning himself to Parkinson’s.

Sylvester Stallone used Frazier’s training methods – running up the stairs of Philadelphia’s museum of Art and punching sides of beef – as inspiration for Rocky. So what did the city do? It erected a statue of Rocky Balboa.

Sadly, Frazier passed away a decade ago from liver cancer. America should be judged on how they treat the legacy of this great heavyweight.

Australian writer Robert Dessaix wrote: “Can there be a more important word than ‘home’ to make your own in the English language? “Love” I suppose, although I wonder sometimes if they might amount to much the same thing”

Home and Love. Not words that one readily associates with the men who play one of the most brutal and ruthless games ever devised. And yet, after the game, there they are, some cradling children in their arms, while others, like the weeping debutant Nicho Hynes, are hugging family over the fence.

And rugby league regions are referred to as ‘nurseries’ – even the vast smelting plant of western Sydney currently producing potent reinforcements for the dominant Panthers machine.

For anyone, the importance of being near family and loved ones cannot be over stated. The wise old mentor Wayne Bennett, deserted by his alcoholic father when he was a boy, has always understood the importance of young players feeling the club is their family. For many boys, the journey of fatherlessness is defined by underachievement, addiction, and despair.

The Storm, who have still not found a productive development pathway for serious Victorian talent, have mastered the art of creating a home for its young imports who are mentored and room together. Without ready access to surfing beaches they soon accet and enjoy Richmond cafe life.

Schoolboy prodigy Curtis Scott shocked everyone when he decided to head to Melbourne to begin his NRL career and in just his second year the skinnyish centre claimed a premiership. But, as we now know, he had some serious issues to deal with; ones the club and his impressive bunch of roomates – Scott Drinkwater, Brodie Croft and Brandon Smith – couldn’t help him with. Their accounts this week of having to track down an out of control Scott in his car make harrowing reading.

Scott left Storm so he could be closer to his family but only went half way, to Canberra, where things got worse for the young man. He has always stated he left his home to escape the NRL fishbowl of Sydney. He probably shouldn’t have left.

Ironically, it is also love that poses the biggest threat to the Storm when hoping to retain its star players.

Cooper Cronk, on his decision to leave for Sydney and the Roosters, stated: “I’m jealous of the guys who have their families here, who have their loved ones (and) have football in the same city. If it was a football decision, I’d be staying here (in Melbourne) for a long period of time”. If his wife had been from Melbourne he would have remained a Storm player.

Josh Addo-Carr knew by leaving he may never get to play finals or Origin again but as he explained: “It’s something I’ve got to do, something I’ve got to do for my family”

And now it’s Cameron Munster’s turn. The larrikin from Rockhampton who failed to nail a spot in junior representative teams and was snatched as an 18 year old and brought to Melbourne to be mentored by Bellamy. Despite, or perhaps due to, a number of behavioral issues along the way he has developed into one of the game’s genuine superstars. He has credited love and fatherhood as a major force behind his impressive 2022 season. Unfortunately for the Storm though it will be those two factors that sound the death knell for his future at the club beyond next season: “If it was only about myself then I’d love to stay, but at the same time I’ve got a young family that I need to worry about and obviously she (partner Bianca) is from Queensland, so we need to make sure we will make the right decision.”.

Of course, Storm aren’t alone. Last year, when he had to let Englishman George Williams and his pregnant wife return home early, Raiders chief executive Don Furner lamented: “We’ve been managing homesickness for 40 years”.

Still, the Storm lose a ridiculously high number of star players for a number of reasons. In a single year they lost Cooper Cronk, Jordan McLean and Tohu Harris. In 2020, it was Cameron Smith, Suli Vunivalu and Tino Fa’asuamaleaui, and last season Josh Addo-Carr, Dale Finucane and Hynes. Now, they’ve just lost four of their starting forward pack.

With the exception of Gus Gould’s absurd claim of Storm’s “incremental decline” prior to their 2020 title, made worse by his appallingly biased commentary of the grand final, claims that the party is over for the Storm are understandable.

Phil Rothfield and others believe that Munster’s farewell will see an end to the Storm dynasty.

But as we know predictions of a decline have always been followed by a rebirth: the promotion of another young star or two in the making and the transformation of older players who had resigned themselves to life on the scrapheap of reserve grade.

Just half an hour into the 2021 season with a scintillating Melbourne transformed into an attacking juggernaut , Andrew Voss said this of the new Storm era sans Cameron Smith:”I’m going to lock this in already…  The new Big Three at Melbourne is Munster, Papenhuyzen and Grant. And two of those are relative rookies”.

The loss of Munster may usher a first in the Bellamy era: the purchase of a genuine star. When asked about a possible move, Parramatta’s Dylan Brown joked about there being no beaches in Melbourne.

But for a while now there has been a jovial 19 yo halfback milling about among Storm’s squad and learning their ways: the man of the match in the under 19’s State of Origin , Jonah Pezet.

I know what you’re thinking: ‘Who cares about the feelings of Melbourne Storm and its supporters?’ A club and people who have experienced an unbelievably lengthy and magical journey of finals appearances and serious aspirations for premiership glory.

Unfortunately, for those thinking those thoughts: Will Storm turn Pezet, Joe Chan, Trent Loiero, Jack Howarth, Will Warbrick, Eliesa Katoa and Sua Fa’alogo into champions? Possibly.

Fortunately, for those thinking those thoughts: Will they eventually leave for home and love? Probably.

Originally published on The Roar: https://www.theroar.com.au/2022/10/02/the-allure-of-love-and-home-will-always-haunt-melbourne-storm/