Massive sport cheats uncovered

[supa!]

NRL strips Melbourne Storm of two premierships over salary cap breaches

MELBOURNE Storm have been stripped of two NRL premierships and fined a total of $1.6 million after being found guilty of long-term salary cap breaches.

NRL chief executive David Gallop announced they would also not be allowed to accrue any premiership points in the 2010 season.

Cm new storm salary cap in story promo strap

Gallop said the Storm had been found to have rorted the salary cap by at least $1.7 million over five years.

"They had a long term system of effectively two sets of books and the elaborate lengths they have gone through to cover this up has been extraordinary," said Gallop.

While Melbourne lost their titles from the 2007 and 2009 seasons Gallop said neither losing grand finalists Manly or Parramatta would assume those titles.

The Storm were also stripped of three minor premierships.

"The club has furthermore been fined $500,000 and will be forced to return $1.1 million in prizemoney with the prizemoney being distributed evenly among the other 15 clubs," said Gallop.

So I'm assuming that no one here even knows anything about what the NRL sport is, so let me try and explain how huge this is in terms you can understand.

Okay, picture your favourite sport. Think of everyone that is involved somehow.. players, fans, other teams, stockholders, sponsors, infrastructure, the franchise etc. Now imagine the team that has been dominating the competition for the past 5 years have been found cheating, and are stripped of two premierships.

Everyone is pissed of and trying to make claims. Teams who were in the grand final with the Storm. Teams who were knocked out of the qualifying finals by them. People who put money on them winning, or other teams winning. It's just such a unbelievably huge deal, should be interesting to see what happens.

[Smacktalks]

The same thing happened in Italy a few years ago in Serie A. Juventus were stripped of 2 league titles and kicked out of the following seasons Europen Cup.

[supa!]

Shit hey, how did that turn out?

I guess this is an even bigger issue for rugby league, as Melbourne is well known as the home of the rival sporting code AFL, so having putting a rugby league team there seemed to be an expansion gamble that payed off.

They were so successful that people poured a shitload of money into the expansion, with a new football stadium actually custom built for them.

The stadium was meant to have its grand opening in a few weeks time... but it looks like after a year they'll probably go bankrupt. Not cool.