Eels - 2016 Issues

[Dash]

I didn't even know they had the ability to do that

They're a licenced alcohol and gaming club. The Government has deemed them to have mismanaged the club - I'm assuming because they've committed fraud. Licencing laws allow the government to give them the arse.

 

[Fozz]

Norman has been suspended for the rest of the season.

NRL bans Parramatta Eels star Corey Norman for rest of season, fined $20,000

 

[vertigo]

And all this happens in a season where their on field attitude is the best it has been in a decade.

 

[Dash]

News that Watmough's insurance payout has been denied, so Parra are on the hook for the whole amount of his ridiculously long and overpriced contract.

It was denied due to it being a pre-existing injury. This creates a very worrying precedent.

 

[I bleed Maroon]

Not surprised in the slightest. QBE didn't mind the attention when they came to this arrangement with the NRL after McKinnon broke his neck, but now that the media attention surrounding that has long since dried up, they couldn't give less of a shit about meeting their obligations.

**** insurance companies in every orifice. It's borderline racketeering at this point.

 

[Foordy]

News that Watmough's insurance payout has been denied, so Parra are on the hook for the whole amount of his ridiculously long and overpriced contract.

It was denied due to it being a pre-existing injury. This creates a very worrying precedent.

how does that affect the Eels salary cap position?

wasn't his insurance payout a prerequisite to the Eels being allowed to make the remainder of his contract cap exempt?

 

[ivanhungryjak]

how does that affect the Eels salary cap position?

wasn't his insurance payout a prerequisite to the Eels being allowed to make the remainder of his contract cap exempt?

Doesn't affect their cap apparently.

 

[ivanhungryjak]

[h=1]Anthony Watmough denied insurance payout for career-ending injury, Parramatta must pay $1.2 million[/h][COLOR=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.65098)]

ANTHONY Watmough has been sensationally denied any insurance payout for his career-ending knee injury, forcing Parramatta to stump up $1.2 million for the remainder of his contract.[/COLOR]
In a rejection letter sent to Watmough, obtained by The Daily Telegraph, insurer QBE deemed the knee injury that ended his career a little over 12 months into his four-year Parramatta deal was “pre-existing”.
But faced with paying out Watmough’s contract for 2017 and 2018, Parramatta angrily dubbed QBE’s denial of his claim “outrageous”.
The insurer’s decision has massive implications for all NRL clubs: creating a ticking time bomb for other players hit with career-ending injuries, and potentially clubs liable for millions of dollars in payouts that they thought were covered by the insurer.

The letter that sealed the Eels fate.Watmough’s insurance claim is believed to have been the first potential seven-figure payout for a player’s career-ending injury since QBE became the insurer for the top 25 players at each club in 2014, in the wake of Alex McKinnon’s on-field accident that left him a quadriplegic.
If, as is now expected, Parramatta is itself now forced to fund Watmough’s contract, it will leave the club a record $11 million-plus in the red for the 2016 season.
But in one piece of good news for Eels fans, the NRL says Watmough’s massive payout will not be included in the 2017 and 2018 salary caps, despite QBE’s ruling: freeing the club to buy marquee players.
An NRL spokesman said QBE’s decision did not override the NRL’s ruling in May that Watmough’s injury was career-ending: “If we determine a player has suffered a career ending injury we can exclude that player’s payments from the salary cap.”





The letter sent this month directly to Watmough from QBE states that his claim was denied because “your inability to play in the NRL or any other professional league is the result of symptomatic, pre-existing degenerative changes to your left knee”.

Watmough retired earlier this season with a knee injury.“In the circumstances, we have determined that you are not eligible for the benefits claimed under the policy.”
But when contacted on Thursday night, Parramatta’s administrator, Max Donnelly, was furious.
“It’s outrageous,” he said. “Why the hell do we have insurance?”
With the ex-Eels and Manly forward’s claim denied, it raises serious questions about the comprehensiveness of career-ending insurance for the game, and therefore their financial exposure of clubs could be much greater than previously thought.
One NRL club official said on Thursday night: “ACL and PCL knee injuries go with the territory in the NRL. So does that mean if players have another knee injury which ends their career, QBE won’t pay? If that’s the case, no club in the NRL will be untouched by this. It means many players are potentially uninsurable.”
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Parramatta maintains Watmough suffered his career-ending injury in February this year, in a “friendly fire” pre-season training mishap with Eels teammate Beau Scott.
But QBE rejects this claim in its letter to Watmough: “Prior to the accident you were experiencing ongoing symptoms and disability relating to your left knee,” the insurer states. “For example, notes from the club physiotherapist … show that before the accident you were receiving injections of Marcaine to your left knee prior to games.”
Marcaine is a drug used to decrease feeling through injection around a nerve in the area of injury.
QBE also lists four dates this year — January 18 and 25, and February 1 and 3 — in which it claims Watmough’s left knee was “intermittently symptomatic”, citing notes by the club physiotherapist.
The NRL introduced the QBE insurance scheme for the top 25 players at each club for career-ending injuries in July 2014, four months after McKinnon’s horrific injury in a Newcastle Knights/Melbourne Storm match.

No Cookies | Daily Telegraph

 

[Dash]

how does that affect the Eels salary cap position?

wasn't his insurance payout a prerequisite to the Eels being allowed to make the remainder of his contract cap exempt?

I think that was just media bullshit. The salary cap decision is purely an NRL one and has nothing to do with insurance. The insurance just determines whether the Eels are out of pocket or not.

 

[Sproj]

So how does that work with Docker? He was covered right?

 

[Dash]

So how does that work with Docker? He was covered right?

Nah, I think he had a sore knee in Under 12's, so no insurance for him.

 

[Morkel]

So how does that work with Docker? He was covered right?

First thing I thought reading that too.

I must say I agree with QBE though. Reportedly that knee was fucked before he left the Sea Eagles. A hard knock may have finished it off but arguably without the pre-existing condition the knock would not have been career-ending.

It is a very difficult line to identify though. If a player has to retire in their early 20's because of injuries, you'd say it was a premature retirement. But they're often the same injuries that players eventually succumb to late in their carreer. There wouldn't be one over 30 that doesn't have rooted shoulders or knees.

And you can't use their contract position to determine a "premature" retirement. You'd have players signing 5 year contracts at the age of 34, retiring "due to injury" and have the rest of their contracts paid out by insurance and not counted in the salary cap.

EDIT: The ones I'd consider genuine would be McKinnon, JYY, Dwyer, Tuiaki. Off the top of my head.

 

[Socnorb]

First thing I thought reading that too.

I must say I agree with QBE though. Reportedly that knee was ****ed before he left the Sea Eagles. A hard knock may have finished it off but arguably without the pre-existing condition the knock would not have been career-ending.

It is a very difficult line to identify though. If a player has to retire in their early 20's because of injuries, you'd say it was a premature retirement. But they're often the same injuries that players eventually succumb to late in their carreer. There wouldn't be one over 30 that doesn't have rooted shoulders or knees.

And you can't use their contract position to determine a "premature" retirement. You'd have players signing 5 year contracts at the age of 34, retiring "due to injury" and have the rest of their contracts paid out by insurance and not counted in the salary cap.

EDIT: The ones I'd consider genuine would be McKinnon, JYY, Dwyer, Tuiaki. Off the top of my head.

This is all on Parra,this was a way of paying overs for a guy for 1 year and stretching the payment over 4 years. A purely cynical attempt to cheat the cap which has blown up in their faces.

 

[Nashy]

It hasn't blown up. Haven't the NRL stated it's still not going to be counted?

 

[Morkel]

It hasn't blown up. Haven't the NRL stated it's still not going to be counted?

Yeah. From next year on. It's a bit bullshit and everyone could see he was never going to last 4 years. Like Gasnier's incident causing the NRL to rethink back-ending, you'd hope this will have them scrutinise contracts further.

 

[tommy]

The offices of four prominent player managers are being raided by police from the NSW fraud squad in a dramatic development in the Parramatta Eels salary cap scandal.
Shortly after 9.30am, police with search warrants arrived at the Woollahra home of Jarryd Hayne's agent Wayne Beavis, the Leichhardt office of Sam Ayoub and the Pitt Street offices of George Mimis and Paul Sutton.

They entered Beavis' property, although Ayoub was not at his office.
Not wanting to forcibly enter the complex, police had to call a locksmith, who let them in shortly before midday.

As police left his property, Beavis released a statement saying he had cooperated with police and would continue to.
"As this is a police investigation, no further comments will be made," he said.

The raids are part of an ongoing investigation into the embattled rugby league club's systemic rorting of the salary cap by paying players under the table.
This year the Parramatta Eels' board was sacked, the club was stripped of 12 competition points and fined $1 million.

Sacked Eels chairman Steve Sharp complained that, in May 2013, when he replaced controversial former chairman Roy Spagnolo, he was immediately contacted by Beavis, Mimis, Ayoub and other agents demanding they honour third-party deals that had been struck by the previous regime.
But, according to Sharp, there were no formal records of these deals.

In his sworn testimony to the NRL integrity unit, Sharp said he told the agents: "We won't honour anything that we don't know anything about."
He said the agents threatened to take their players from the club.

"And I said, 'Well, you can take your players out of the club, take your wooden spoon with you and - and piss off .' "
As the NRL investigation continued, it found that the Eels had buckled.

Former Eels chief executive Scott Seward told the NRL that several of Beavis' clients were the beneficiaries of a series of off-the-books payments. Agents' fees range from 4 to 7 per cent of their players' earnings.
Seward claimed the Eels paid Beavis directly for securing the services of Lee Mossop from the English Super League.

Mossop was not a success and, after playing only a handful of games, the Eels told the NRL they had paid $35,000 to secure his release so Mossop could return to England.
However, documents obtained by Fairfax Media reveal that the actual amount negotiated by Seward and Beavis was $85,000.
"A further $50k will be paid direct to Lee's UK bank account I understand to wrap the matter up," Beavis wrote in one email to Seward.
Another of Beavis' clients is star player Jarryd Hayne, who continued to receive unregistered third-party payments, even though he had left the Eels to play American football with the San Francisco 49ers.
One such payment for $26,000 went into a company controlled by Spagnolo while another payment for $26,000 was made to Beavis, in April last year.
Another of Beavis' clients, Darcy Lussick, bought a heavily discounted apartment in Top Ryde from the family of disgraced former Labor minister Eddie Obeid.
The integrity unit was told that a napkin in a coffee shop was used by Ayoub to negotiate a third-party deal for his player Nathan Peats.
Anomalies with the contractual negotiations between Mimis and Parramatta's then star recruit Kieran Foran are also understood to be of interest to police.
Player managers have to sign a "Total Remuneration Declaration" with the NRL about a player's total remuneration, including third-party agreements.
Any third-party agreement has to be done with the written approval of the NRL's salary cap auditor.
Crucially, the declaration to the NRL is covered by the provisions of the NSW Oaths Act, which can make it a criminal offence if such declarations are found to be knowingly false.

NRL player agents including Jarryd Hayne's targeted in police raids by fraud squad