Manly rorted salary of DCE
NRL salary cap investigators found the Manly Sea Eagles cheated the salary cap in convincing skipper Daly CherryEvans to backflip on the Gold Coast Titans in 2015 in a deal that was so suspect their then chief executive threatened to quit.
Cherry-Evans agreed to an eight-year, $10 million contract – at the time the most lucrative in NRL history – to play the remainder of his career at the Sea Eagles.
But the money registered in salary cap documents was less than what he was actually being paid. Sources have revealed he was getting another $400,000 outside the cap.
There are no suggestions Cherry-Evans was aware of the payment discrepancies.
However, News Corp can reveal that then chief executive Joe Kelly refused to sign off on Cherry Evans’ contract and offered to hand in his resignation, such were his concerns.
Instead, chairman and owner Scott Penn signed off on the deal before it was registered by the NRL, but insists the Sea Eagles did not break salary cap rules.
Manly also secured the signature of centre Dylan Walker from the South Sydney Rabbitohs under a similar arrangement to Cherry-Evans in that he was paid outside the salary cap figures.
Again, there’s no suggestion Walker knew of the payment discrepancies.
In 800,000 pages of documents captured from mobile phones and computer hard drives, the NRL found a total of 13 players had been paid outside the cap over five years.
Five of them were serious breaches – the rest for more minor infringements like free cars that were supposed to have been included in the salary cap.
The NRL finally completed its nine-month investigation by handing down a series of penalties yesterday in revealing the club had paid an extra $1.5 million to players outside the cap.
The penalties included a $750,000 fine to be reduced to $500,000 if the club undertakes appropriate governance changes to ensure there is no repeat of the breaches.
THE club will play $330,000 under the salary cap for the next two seasons;
ROOSTERS CEO Joe Kelly, the former Manly boss, was suspended for 12 months;
SEA Eagles chief operating officer Neil Bare was suspended for 12 months;
COACH Trent Barrett received an official warning and Immortal Bob Fulton will no longer be considered for a role as an Australian selector.