1 hour ago
1
Two key figures at the centre of one of the NRL's biggest cheating scandals were shockingly seen clinking glasses at the AFL Grand Final lunch on Saturday afternoon.
Former NRL chief executive David Gallop and ex-Melbourne Storm boss Brian Waldron were, according to The Australian, two invitees to Saturday’s big luncheon in the MCG Olympic Room.
The outlet states that Gallop had been a guest of the AFL, while Waldron had been invited by the Brisbane Lions and sat at the Queensland club’s table.
It was 15 years ago that the pair found themselves at loggerheads, when the NRL stripped the Storm of both their 2007 and 2009 premierships from them, as well as multiple minor premiership titles and $1.6million, after the club were found to have been guilty of systematic salary cap breaches.
The club was deemed to have cheated in their attempts to retain the biggest and best players in the game.
Melbourne’s coach at the time, Craig Bellamy and his team had been left feeling blindsided by the news.
Former NRL chief executive David Gallop (left) and former Melbourne Storm chief Brian Waldron reportedly sat down for a drink at the AFL Grand Final this weekend
It came after the pair found themselves at loggerheads after Melbourne were sanctioned and stripped of two premiership titles for breaching the NRL salary cap in 2010 (Pictured: Waldron_
‘This is an absolute shock to me, to our football staff, to our players. Personally, I am heartbroken,’ Bellamy said at the time.
Ex-Melbourne chief executive, Waldron, has in the past fired shots at Gallop, notably claiming that the rigid salary rules that the NRL powerbroker had forced him to cheat the salary cap in order to help keep his club competitive.
He was later banned from the NRL for life, and while admitting back in 2015 that he was to blame, he added that the NRL’s stringent rules had forced his hand.
Now, though, Gallop has explained to The Australian that he wants to quiz the ex-NRL boss on the scandal when they catch up again for lunch in Sydney.
‘In truth, Brian and I always had a good relationship prior to the drama of 2010,’ Gallop said to The Australian.
‘He was a good thinker on the game and a big contributor in club meetings.
‘We are going to catch up for lunch and it will be fascinating to hear how he reflects on it all and especially how and why it all got so out of control at the club in those years.’
But the outlet adds that news the pair have been catching up and will now go for lunch, has made some back in Melbourne feel a little uneasy.
Storm chief Craig Bellamy admits that the salary cap breach and sanctions took a big toll on his players
Gallop caught a lot of flak following the fallout that surrounded the scandal and has continued to shoot barbs at the Storm even 10 years after the salary cap penalties were first handed down.
In 2020, he fired up at claims that the Storm had been pushed into accepting their salary cap penalties.
It came after Cameron Smith had shot a barb at the former NRL chief, who is now the chairman of Venues NSW and a director at Tabcorp, stating that he wasn’t angry with ex-Storm boss Waldron, but was disappointed at Gallop instead.
‘My anger is mainly directed at the NRL for the penalties they handed down and the way the whole matter was handled. And for that I blame David Gallop,’ he wrote in his biography, The Storm Within, where he also claimed that players were ‘hung out to dry.’
It came as former Storm directors Rob Moodie and Peter Maher had planned to make a submission to the NRL to have their sanctions re-examined following the salary cap breaches, appearing to claim that the sanctions were too excessive.
However, Gallop hit back, stating to The Herald Sun: ‘Of course this latest attempt to criticise the process is also 100 per cent wrong and simply ignores the fact that they completely agreed to the process being truncated.’
He added: ‘The penalties were tough because they had to be. These Storm people should consider how tarnished the entire sport would be if they kept those trophies.’
Melbourne coach, Bellamy, has also recently opened up on some of the difficulties his playing contingent faced in the wake of the scandal.
Gallop (right) has continued to hit back at criticism over the severity of the penalties handed to the Storm
'We were going to away games and the bus was pulling up out the back of Brookvale Oval, and there was a line-up of away fans spitting at us, throwing cans of beer at us. Just abuse,’ the footy coach said in August.
'I'm thinking how this can't go on … But it just went on.
'I know my Mum in Portland got an earful off a couple of young blokes. I had some of the toughest players I ever coached come into the office, and I had to tell them we just can't keep them.
'A couple of them were crying on my shoulder. What I'm proudest of is how we recovered from that.'
