Paul Lewis: NRL - Any rort in a Storm

NRL CEO David Gallop. Photo / Getty Images

Now that the Storm has passed at Mt Smart, it's time to say that the NRL should pull the pin on the Melbourne franchise - let the air out of the tyres, take off the distributor cap, stick a potato up the exhaust pipe, walk away and start again.

This season's solution of stripping all the points from the Storm but forcing them to play has been exposed as an empty strategy. It was designed to keep the season on track; to live up to broadcasting and sponsorship contracts; to be seen to be a punishment while the NRL and others sorted out what to do.

But it has come back to haunt the NRL with all the regretful force of that joke about the blonde who bought a baby alarm. She still managed to get pregnant.

Seriously, what did we expect? While you can understand the efforts of the NRL to keep their ship on as even a keel as could be, they have overseen all sorts of injustices.

Like players abiding by the salary cap having to play against those who didn't. Like the Warriors. They had the bad luck to confront the Storm the weekend after the original salary cap - and copped the full backlash of a talented group in high dudgeon.

Last night, the Warriors again came up against the Storm with the storm raging around them not giving them quite so much oomph this time.

Not on, I say. What the hell are the Storm still doing in this competition? It's hard enough playing against Shayne Hayne and what pass for referees in the NRL - and if there was ever proof that the two-ref thing isn't working, it was that sorry display of unconscious, subliminal anti-Kiwi bias last Sunday.

The cheats have prospered. To date, other than negative publicity, I have yet to see any cast-iron punishment applied to anyone.

Sure, the club has been stripped of premierships and NRL titles and a A$1.6m fine; and the bloodletting hasn't finished yet.

But the players have not yet suffered any penalty other than the demotivating effect of playing for no points. All of them are still running around, playing league or rugby. Many of them are among the biggest stars of the game.

The Deloittes report into the rort found 13 Storm players - including seven current members of the squad - had received payments or benefits from third parties that fell outside the cap.

The players were Billy Slater, Cameron Smith, Greg Inglis, Cooper Cronk, Ryan Hoffman, Anthony Quinn and Brett White and former players Dallas Johnson, Will Chambers, Mick Crocker, Matt Geyer, Steve Turner and Antonio Kaufusi.

There was no evidence to suggest the players knew the payments could contribute to the club breaching the salary cap. None of them were willing to assist with the investigation.

That's the killer, right there.

The fact that none of the Storm players involved are co-operating with the inquiry is risible. What sort of mafia-inspired, Underbelly, omerta twaddle is this?

It makes a joke of league. Everyone looking in from the outside finds it difficult to believe that players did not know what was going on. But wasn't that Billy Slater I saw running round at Mt Smart last night? Wasn't that Inglis? They were still being Slater and Inglis; still being paid, presumably; still being stars; still with the presumption of innocence.

Yes, Slater and Inglis may have done nothing wrong and there is no evidence to suggest otherwise, let's be clear.

But while it is possible to understand the exigencies of running and sustaining a competition like the NRL, the plain fact is that by allowing the Storm to continue to exist and the players to continue to play, the NRL have only made it worse. To paraphrase Samuel Pepys, their action has been like a man crapping in his hat and then putting it on his head.

NRL boss David Gallop has been at pains to point out the severity of the punishment and, fair enough, the NRL is doing more than in 2002, when the Bulldogs were found to be doing the same thing, albeit not quite at Storm levels of cheating.

It is cheating. You know it is. Assembling that team of stars while other clubs (we hope ... ) were staying under the salary cap is cheating as much as the footballer who dives hoping to win a penalty; as much as Tonya Harding's arranged assault on ice skating rival Nancy Kerrigan; as much as the rugby player who deliberately provokes an opponent to retaliate and thus get sent off.

There may be other players who were not rorting the system. Too bad. The only way to clean up this mess in NRL is to pot the ball and swallow the cue. Get rid of the Storm. Legislate it - or any other club - out of existence as soon as a salary cap breach is proven.

If players will not co-operate, get rid of them too. Ban them for life. Then the NRL has to toughen up its stance all over again. Salary cap breaches, deliberate or otherwise must not be tolerated.

A new set of rules must be devised and agreed by all NRL clubs. Those rules would effectively say any contravening of salary cap rules would result in the instant disbanding of the club and the whole playing roster, innocent or not, would be banned for at least one full season and maybe two.

That'd fix it. Short-term pain, long-term gain.

The NRL, while trying to be tougher, have unconsciously made something of a mockery of their own competition by allowing the Storm and the players involved to stay in it.

It's like saying to Richard Nixon after Watergate: "OK, Dicky, you continue to be President of the US - but hand over that tape recorder."

Sure enough, the Storm began to mass their defences - whining in May that they hadn't had a "fair hearing" when they were stripped of premierships, NRL titles and A$1.6m in fines. They threatened legal action before the independent directors were sacked this week, making such action less likely.

This whole Storm-NRL business reminds me of the young boy who lost his mum in the supermarket. The kindly supervisor patted the little cherub on the head and said: "What's she like?'

"Vodka and big dicks," came the reply.

Not sure about the vodka but somehow, even after all this, the Storm have still managed to make the NRL look like Big Dicks.