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Inlander:
I dunno, this will probably make the Storm more popular than ever. They've always thrived on a bunker mentality down here in Melbourne: the Melbourne "Us" vs. Sydney "Them" has long been the mentality of the team and of its fans. This will just give them all a nice persecution complex to go along with that.
I've got mixed feelings about this; obviously, we're talking about massive breaches of the salary cap which disadvantages all those teams in the competition which are trying to play by the rules; on the other hand, I do think that the salary cap unfairly punishes teams that habitually develop their own playing talent, such as Melbourne. I think the NRL should be encouraging every team to develop their own playing ranks from juniors right through to first grade, but the salary cap system only discourages that. What I think they should do is introduce a kind of salary cap "discount" system: players that a club has developed in-house should only have half of their actual salary count towards the salary cap.
(For those of you outside Australia: http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/04/22/2880349.htm.)
Spluff:
I expect that most of the core supporter group will probably continue supporting them, but that's not what I think will do them in. Their already low attendances are probably going to drop even further due to the fact that they cannot take the points from any game, even if they win meaning that for the first time in their existence they will not be playing finals. On top of that they will (likely) lose several million dollars in sponsorships and 2.3 million in fines, and they will probably lose several players due to either not being able to fit them into the salary cap or having the players walk after being dragged into the scandal. Consider also that the new Union franchise starting up in Melbourne that was going to steal members from the Storm anyway, and they've got trouble on their hands.
I fully expect this to have long lasting repercussions for the club, and eventually kill off the Melbourne Storm. The Carlton FC nearly died out after a similar incident, and they are a much, much stronger and powerful club who suffered much smaller fines for their rorting of the cap - eventually it took Dick Pratt funneling millions of dollars into the club to keep it afloat, and the Storm don't have any kind of powerful connections like Pratt or VISY.
And if League lose their already tenuous foothold in Melbourne then it's hard to see a strong future for the game, with the AFLs increasingly aggressive expansion into Rugby heartlands and the increased popularity of soccer.
Inlander:
Hmm, those are all good points.
Lucky for me I think the Storm are a bunch of arrogant arseholes who play an incredibly boring style of rugby league and have been the main proponents in the NRL in recent years of a particularly ugly "whatever it takes" mentality akin to the attitude of the Australian cricket team.
Aurjay:
Crap news of the week. I just found out im going to be in the field for the whole month of the World Cup. My Sgt has a satellite radio so i might be able to at least listen to the games. Won't be the same but at least its something.
David_Dovey:
--- Quote from: Spluff on 22 Apr 2010, 02:26 --- the Storm don't have any kind of powerful connections like Pratt or VISY.
--- End quote ---
Aren't they owned by News Corp?
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