- Fri Jan 24, 2020 6:04 pm
#8701
For those who prefer not to look elsewhere, this from St Andy.....
May I say I have no contacts, no inside information, but I was in the police force for 17 years, most of it as a detective and often worked closely with the forces commercial fraud department, so this may give me a certain angle.
At the moment, especially on the Saracens board, they are, understandably looking for any little nugget to mitigate the case for the defence. I especially feel for the old time fans, who have done no wrong and wish them the best. But what they and some of us are looking at is the minutiae of the case, we are maybe failing to see the wood for the trees.
This sort of case is by no means unique in life in general, or sport in general but is probably the worst of its kind in rugby. It is about people, and one man in particulars hubris and arrogance, it is about money, it is about deceit. And in my view is not about this year, or the last three years, or even the last ten. It goes back to the last century. Also, like many cases it is not so much the crime that is seen as so heinous it is the continual cover up, with only anything actually being admitted once the evidence is overwhelming and not a hint of real contrition or apology to all the thousands of fans, employees and players of other clubs whose time, money, glory and medals they have stolen
Mr. Nigel Wray is not remembered fondly by Nottingham Forest Football fans, he had money, but wanted to be the sportsman who was parading around the pitch with the big silver cup. Unfortunately, money cannot buy you sporting talent for yourself, so the only way is to get others to do it for you. Mr. Wray realised, that even with his large wealth, the way football was going this was never going to be nearly enough to compete with the billionaires on the way. And he was right.
Rugby on the other hand was in its professional infancy and very much finding its feet. In the first instance I think there may have been a genuine attempt to grow the club and the fan base, with the free tickets, gimmicks and matches at Wembley. "If you build it they will come", but they didn't.
I remember us all being told that the astronomic losses were temporary and the club planned to at least break even within a few years. Eventually that message stopped and the South Africans had arrived complete with riches beyond the dreams of avarice. This I believe is where the rot really set in.
In spite of all the money. it could not be spent because of the salary cap, but that cap was only voted in by a slender majority, Mr Wray had to sign up to it and looked the other owners and stakeholders in the eye and lied to their faces, it looked like it was not taken particularly seriously by a number of clubs anyway. Saracens however were the ones who pushed it the most, with a myriad of South African stars gracing their team. And so the period of domination began, rumours abounded about monies and property being paid in South Africa.
The Saffacens era eventually evolved, into hoovering up UK and especially English talent and an academy which was excellent, although not quite as excellent as they would have us believe because it has been allowed to operate in a way that would have been impossible if abiding by the cap. This was a good plan because not only were the best English players playing for Saracens, they weren't playing for anyone else in the Premiership. It became increasingly suspicious that every other club would have to lose star players to stay within the cap, but Saracens never did in fact it was often Saracens they would go to. It was then the spin machine had to click into gear, it was about the academy, it was about the facilities, it was about the medical care, it was about the creche, it was about the bonding trips, the brotherhood, the wolfpack. The only thing it was never about was the money. And every signing, had the tagline attached "There is something special was happening at Saracens." Well at least that bit was true.
To keep the whole thing rolling on they managed to get one and then two marquee players outwith the cap. They could snap up a couple of players others could not afford, pay them what you like, thereby tilting the balance but it was not enough.
The deception was now in full swing the trophies were flooding in, but that was still not enough, now it was time to really rub our noses in it. From a Saints point of view, who can forget the free beer tent and the march en mass to the stadium. The loud singing of "their" song in the dressing rooms. In the stands, waving their free flags singing as "When the Saints go marching home," after yet another drubbing. Away from home, the lack of grace by putting a 2014 league champions sign up when they had lost the final, and the guard of honour with children in arms BEFORE the match.
Meanwhile me and I am sure many other fans across the country, would year after year scan down the team sheet and especially the replacements and ask ourselves, how do they actually, really afford all this lot and be under the cap.
And so it went on and progressed from domestic to European domination and matches in the USA.
This brings us to three years ago and it would seem the other clubs, who obviously knew more than they would ever let on to the ordinary supporter, decided this could not be allowed to continue, but because a couple of other clubs had breached the cap by a small amount, it was decided that a fine would be paid, a line drawn and the whole thing brushed under the carpet. Again Mr. Wray looked them all in the eye and agreed.
He knew though that to comply in future he would have to reduce his squad, less cups perhaps, less lovely photos of him and his team on the pitch with the big silver cup. "Can't have that, we'll do what we did last time and find a way round it." But this time it was supercharged, it would seem schemes were hatched and lot of money paid to lawyers for opinions. But opinions are exactly that, and different lawyers have different opinions. So instead of taking the schemes to the league to get them signed off or not, he ran with it and the salary cap breach sky rocketed. The likes of Saints were being thrashed by 50 or 60 points every time we played them. Enough was finally enough and an independent inquiry has been done. Of course by this time, it seems the South Africans had seen the writing on the wall and perhaps that Mr. Wray had become a loose cannon and left the scene.
Now it is perfectly fair to argue that the results of this inquiry have been handled badly with diplomatic language used, redactions and the thing coming out piecemeal, revealing slowly a picture emerging. That said it is clear Saracens have no way of getting below the cap this season and thus if they could make up the 35 penalty, with an illegal squad then the result would be an innocent club relegated. This would have been unacceptable. But even then they could've taken the forensic audit option, so I suspect they know that what that would reveal would damn them to relegation anyway. But before this we once again got the old lines about the academy, and perhaps the most sickening of all, the co-investments "looking after players futures." But it emerges not the marquee players futures, can pay them as much you like anyway, not the fringe players futures. No, only the ones we need to make it look we are paying less, to keep them and stay under the cap.
And so to the future, it seems that the RFU are bending over backwards for the Saracens players, Farrell is on about staying on, fine what about the others? The problem now is Saracens RFC need to cut all ties with Nigel Wray to come back with any integrity at all, but without his money they are a complete basket case, nobody is going to want to back them and the sponsors are already decamping. The brand is toxic. How then are they going to pay these players, even the vastly reduced amounts that they would need to to get under the cap? They certainly dont have the fan base to do it.
So the sorry saga draws to a conclusion, where nobody comes out with much credit. So I think the words of the character Valery Lugasov, who was the nuclear scientist who carried out the Soviet investigation into the Chernobyl. And no I am not saying the two are comparable but the words from the TV series where he told the truth and thereby damned himself to exile until his later suicide, are apt:
"Our secrets and our lies, they are practically what define us, when the truth offends we lie and lie until we can hardly remember that it is even there. But it is still there. Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth, sooner or later that debt is paid."