Melbourne Storm LOL

I dont really follow rugby at all (I'm from Melbourne...) so I find this pretty funny.

A rugby league team deliberately cooked the books and breached their salary cap over the last 5 years, and are now stripped of all the premierships they won (3 minor and 2 premierships) in the last 5 years.
They also cannot accrue and points this season, so effectively will be playing to lose.

Pretty big penalty, but fuck... i rekon this will stop it happening again!

...
I thought the storm hit Melbourne hard. I guess it did in different ways.

moved to Sports Lounge

I don't really follow the NRL either but as I understand it a similar thing happened with the Bulldogs a few years back. Guess the Storm weren't paying attention.

Holy shit, I hadn't heard about this until now. This is probably the biggest thing to happen to rugby league since Super League. $700,000 is a HUGE breach considering the cap is like 4 million.

I've heard it's the most severe punishment (and to that end, one of the biggest scandals) in the history of Australian sport.

They were saying on Fox Sports news that it's one of the harshest sporting penalties in the World from like the last 10 years. The only one the hosts could think of that was worse was Juventus being relegated and stripped of titles for trying to bribe referees.

It puts the Timberwolves/Joe Smith situation ten years ago look like a slap on the wrist. They at least were able to continue competing and kept making the Playoffs, plus they got one of those stripped draft picks back.