The news is breaking that the New Zealand Warriors have breached the salary cap and are set to start the upcoming NRL season on negative points plus a hefty fine. I am glad that the NRL are going to apply the full penalty against the Warriors because the Salary Cap is the one thing that the NRL relies upon to have competitive seasons and cyclical results of teams. A closer, more even comp means more fans through the gate and more TV and sponsorship revenue. In essence, without the cap, the NRL would become lopsided and some teams will only be there to make up the numbers with zero chance of winning – look at the English Premier League and what a free market can do.
So the Warriors break the cap and they get punished. Good. What is disconcerting is that the NRL’s Chief Auditor of the salary cap, Ian Schubert, wasn’t responsible for detecting the breach. It has been reported that the Warriors themselves, after a change of administration, discovered the breaches by the prior administration and notified the NRL. Essentially they fell on their sword in fear of an audit and thought they would get leniency for volunteering the breaches to the NRL.
What I want to know is why Ian Schubert & co didn’t detect the breach when they only recently conducted an audit of the Warriors? The Warriors’ books were examined and deemed clean and yet there was a half a million in undisclosed secret payments to players. The press and the NRL however have been lauding the good work by Ian Schubert and have actually used this episode to praise the auditors. It’s a joke… that an auditor can go in and do a detail audit and yet find nothing untoward and have the club turn around a few months later volunteering that they have been cheating.
If this was a PriceWaterhouseCoopers or a KPMG audit in the corporate world, there would be a serious inquiry. Instead Schubert gets praised for his “continuing good work at uncovering salary cap cheating” and the press have also dug out the 2002 stories of how the Bulldogs were also caught cheating by Schubert.
But my recollection of the events of 2002 was that the Bulldogs were caught only after a pair of investigative journalists uncovered illegal payments to Bulldogs players as part of the Oasis Redevelopment project. In short, a third party looking at something else non-league related caught them and blew the whistle. Ian Schubert though had once again given the Bulldogs books the seal of approval and yet he is lauded for his good work.
In short the salary cap is clearly being breached by clubs and only good luck and fortune (and a guilty conscience on the part of the Warriors) has resulted in cap breaches being detected. Ian Schubert over the years has a zero success rate and I think its about time that the NRL look into other means of policing. Perhaps hiring a PwC or KPMG with greater powers to delve into player personal financial records would be a step forward as opposed to an old ex-Rooster lock forward waltzing in every so often.
Something has to give and if the NRL want to be taken seriously, then they need to reform their system.
4 comments:
I'll say it once. AFL
That is where the fun is ;-)
PS: DM is dead to us in the world of Blood Bowl it seems...time to kill those dead links you have on your page.
Yes, have to refine the links on the right side panel... alot of them i dont actually use and some that i do are not on there.
PS - AFL is GAY!
a) Keep in mind Clay you're getting your info from the media you regularly revile
b) I read a report that said Schubert did indeed find something funny in a routine less detailed audit, and had been going to conduct a more thorough one.
Considering the propensity of league administrators for coverups, I wouldn't be surprised if this is what prompted the new administrations "honesty"
Might as well add:
c) Getting access to players records is something the NRL have been trying to do for years. The Players Association won't agree to it though, which means they can't do it - they'd be breaking way too many privacy laws in the process.
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