James Hooper says it’s time for Parramatta Eels chairman Steve Sharp to go.
Camera IconJames Hooper says it’s time for Parramatta Eels chairman Steve Sharp to go. Credit: News Corp Australia

It’s time for Steve Sharp and other implicated Eels officials to stop court action and fall on their sword

Comment by James HooperNews Corp Australia

THE original supercoach Jack Gibson famously said winning starts in the front office.

Unfortunately for the Parramatta Eels, the club Gibson coached to three premierships in the 1980s, the inmates have had the keys to the blue and gold front office asylum far too long.

The audacity of the five Parramatta football executives who have taken Supreme Court action against the NRL over Tuesday’s salary cap rorting punishments is mind-blowing.

These are the five blokes who have essentially driven the Parramatta Eels off Sydney Harbour Bridge.

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Yet despite the NRL taking 56 days to forensically comb over 700,000 emails, text messages and documents before making the hard line call to strip them of their accreditation, these five are still so delusional they’ve played the Supreme Court card.

Hello, am I missing something here?

Parramatta Eels chairman Steve Sharp makes a fast getaway on Tuesday.
Camera IconParramatta Eels chairman Steve Sharp makes a fast getaway on Tuesday. Credit: News Corp Australia

Former Parramatta star Eric Grothe Jnr joins Ben Ikin, Ben Glover and Nathan Ryan to discuss the Eels salary cap scandal and how they can fix their problems.

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Cop the punishment, go quietly and Parramatta are still a genuine chance of resolving the issue of being $570,000 over the salary cap and mounting a run at the finals.

But the longer these blokes cling on, the less likely the Eels are to be playing for premiership points when they meet South Sydney in round 10 on Friday week.

How can they expect any Eels fan to take them seriously? Please.

If I was a Parramatta supporter, I would refuse to shell out another dollar supporting the Eels while this lot are still involved.

Whether they like it or not, this stain on the game has unfolded on their watch.

I like Steve Sharp. He was a tough second-rower during the 1980s and I genuinely believe he’s a decent man who has most likely been puppeteered into a compromised position.

But the reality is he is not an NRL chairman. The fact the Eels have promised players $3 million in payments outside of the salary cap since the start of 2013 means it’s time for Sharp to go.

Sure, the Eels have long been a laughing stock as the most poorly administered NRL club going through 25 different directors, six CEO’s and four coaches in the past seven years.

Right now, that’s irrelevant. The people who matter the most are the fans.

The fact some Eels players received undeclared cash payments and the NRL is continuing to investigate this means Sharp, deputy chairman Tom Issa, board member Peter Serrao, CEO John Boulous and football manager Daniel Anderson must fall on their swords.

It doesn’t matter if they didn’t know. It happened on their watch. They need to quit their posts and hand over their NRL accreditation immediately.

The game is up. There’s too many whistleblowers who have tipped the bucket.

In previous salary cap rorts with Canterbury-Bankstown and Melbourne Storm, when the gig was up the culprits conceded with a hands-in-the-air mea culpa.

Yet despite the NRL’s head of integrity Nick Weeks conducting the most comprehensive salary cap investigation in history, the Parramatta five are still living in denial.

Coach Brad Arthur has won praise for the way he’s handled himself and rightly so.

But the rest of the directors who’ve been grilled by the NRL have been described as unreliable witnesses.

NRL CEO Todd Greenberg confirmed the Eels engaged in a deliberate, co-ordinated, sustained system of rorting the salary cap for the past five seasons.

In Greenberg’s words, the actions of those at the club who have orchestrated the rort has left a stain on the game.

So please, for the sake of the legion of blue and gold fans you have done a gross disservice, bugger off.

No Supreme Court injunction, good riddance. As Greenberg said today, it stops now.