‘Secret Tassie scheme’

Hawthorn great’s salary cap rort claims

EX-AFL boss Ross Oakley says questions about Hawthorn’s salary cap in its golden years never came across his desk.

Hawks great Don Scott has alleged the club brazenly cheated the player payments system using a secret Tasmanian bank account during its historic run of premierships in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

But Oakley, the league’s chief executive from 1986-96, said concerns over Hawthorn’s conduct were never raised. “I know nothing about them having a secret bank account and if we did, we would have done something about it,” Oakley said.

“I have absolutely no knowledge of it, so there’s not much I can say other than if we’d known they would have been penalised.”

Five-time Hawthorn premiership legend Dermott Brereton rubbished Scott’s allegations.

“If Don’s silly claim had any real legitimacy, I would honour it with an answer,” Brereton said.

Collingwood president Eddie McGuire said Scott’s claims were “a massive story”.

“I don’t think there is any doubt at all that that was all happening in the 80s, and it wasn’t just at the Hawthorn Football Club,” McGuire told Triple M. “It was (systemic) throughout the AFL or the VFL as it was then known.

“What Don is saying, I have no doubt would be correct, he’s putting a little bit of meat on the bones of all this sort of stuff. The whole thing was just a rort. It was a shemozzle.”

The AFL had a moratorium in 1995 allowing clubs to come clean and confess past breaches without the threat of punishment.

“Carlton owned up to it … they took advantage of the moratorium but another club didn’t and my memory was it was Essendon. And eventually they got hammered for it,” Oakley said.

Asked if Hawthorn had ever admitted to anything, Oakley said: “No. Never. Not in my knowledge.”

Scott said the league’s longtime salary cap officer Phil Ryan, president of Hawthorn from 1968-1979, warned Hawks bosses about their conduct after becoming aware of the Tasmanian payments scheme.