I have gone through every range of emotion this morning. Anger, sadness, hope, pity. My initial response to the 12 points was that it was an outrage, however, after hearing the $3m figure touted in the press conference (and I'd like to see some clarification on that), I'm actually coming round to the fact that the solution and point penalty was fair and actually quite clever.
Totally realise if some of you are still in the outrage phase, and that this may even seem like a betrayal, but once the NRL went past the four point line in the sand, if really was how far were they going to go and there was a lot of pressure from various media outlets and corners of the NRL to treat the Eels in the same way that the Storm and Bulldogs were treated in the past and to wipe out the season.
As much as the 12 points hurt, playing with no hope at all would have been absolutely gut-wrenching. I think the game would have lost supporters in the thousands.
Docking the 12 points won this season, has an obvious logic behind it and I can understand it. Had it just been ten points, because that's the arbitrary number we decided upon, would have generated all sort of debate and argument as to whether it was too much or too many. In that respect, the solution is actually quite elegant.
With my Parramatta heart bleeding, I find it hard to stomach 12 points, but when I manage to gather myself and look at it from an objective, or straight business perspective, I think Greenberg and his team have probably managed it as well as they possibly could.
Anyway, interested in what other people think...
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I'm with you Phil. It's been quite the roller coaster - and it's not even 2pm!! The press conference really calmed me down. To hear of how reluctant we were as a club to cooperate with the NRL was absolutely disgusting. That's the hardest part to stomach, and I think that makes part of the penalty understandable.... still gutted.
I'm hearing the Watmough issue will not be included in the shedding of the 2016 salary cap breach of $500K????!!! The breach money will have to come from elsewhere...i.e cutting players?!
exactly, and what happens if they lose a couple of games in the next couple of weeks, thus making it impossible to reach the finals, how will the players feel then if they have dropped 20-30 grand.
Fair.
They've classified our TPA's for 2016 as illegitimate and subsequently put it into our cap.
We're not cap compliant this year and we technically cheated to win the games we did. We are lucky to be given hope, but I honestly think itll take is more than a month to get all of this in order. As such, we'll need to win 13 from 12. Season done and dusted.
By their logic had we fixed it earlier the point deduction would have been less as we would have been under the cap sooner.
I concur Phil. The one point out of the whole episode that concerns me more than most is the fact we have to shed something in the order of $500K before we can play for points this year!! Where will this be coming from?? The thing that disappoints me the most is that the boys want to play for the eels, and each other and us, the supporters. I think they would be open to pay cuts this year, yet the NRL has closed the door to that by bringing out the old chestnut of market values....Yet (i'll get on the bandwagon now) the broncos players are allowed to have contracts for unders to play for Bennett! But I guess that is for another time and place.
The penalty is fair. Ex footballers should be far from running the club. I hear suggestions of Sterlo being brought in and think it is just crazy... we need someone with the proper credentials to nurse us out of this. The salary cap is a complexity in contract negotiations and those without the skill to understand it are and will always be a threat to cause for cheating.
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