The NRL has issued almost half a million dollars in salary cap fines against seven clubs including last season's premiers Brisbane. The decision follows a full review by NRL salary cap auditor Ian Schubert in which the NRL handed out fines totalling $464,849, with Canberra the heaviest hit club with a $173,203 fine. The Broncos have been hit with a $30,000 fine while grand finalists Melbourne were handed a $63,266 breach notice. St George Illawarra ($74,975), Newcastle ($19,260), South Sydney ($54,145) and Wests Tigers ($50,000) were the other NRL clubs fined. The NRL, however, pointed out that none of the breaches were for deliberate attempts to circumvent the salary cap rules. The fines relate to a range of non compliance offences from failure to properly notify the NRL of third party agreements, the treatment of payments to players departing clubs, overspending in the 'Top 25' cap and in the second tier, the treatment of payments to managers and the provision of statutory declarations. "While these are not deliberate, systematic attempts to cheat, the fines are an expensive lesson in the need for administrative diligence," said NRL chief executive David Gallop. "The Board has sent another clear message about the game's commitment to enforcing the salary cap. "Compliance can be challenging at times but everyone is subject to the same rules and every club benefits from the success the competition has enjoyed through the salary cap in recent years. "The encouraging thing is that clubs are generally trying to do the right thing. "The fines certainly show that some should work harder in understanding all their obligations but there is nothing that we can see in these audits which would suggest the sort of systematic abuse which would require the loss of competition points." The clubs have five business days in which to make any extra submissions to the NRL in relation to the fine amounts.
If the dogs lost say 30 points for going over the cap on say two mill, then surely the loss of points can be graded, say 100 thou over, lose one point and so on. Taking money of these clubs doesn't seem to be a disincentive to 'cheat a little bit'.
