Hawks were big salary cap cheats says Don Scott

[saynta]

https://www.heraldsun.com.au/sport/afl/ ... 2b7b45294b

[Bowey Boy]

Can't read it but I remember a lot of footballers wives were on the payroll for non existent secretarial work etc.

[saynta]

Can't read it but I remember a lot of footballers wives were on the payroll for non existent secretarial work etc.

"Hawthorn dominated the late 1980s and early 1990s, winning four premierships with a star-studded team. But explosive claims of systematic salary cap cheating have cast doubt over their legacy. Read the shocking details.
Michael Warner, Herald Sun

Hawthorn great Don Scott has cast doubt over the club’s historic run of premierships in the late 1980s and early 1990s by claiming the Hawks systematically cheated the salary cap.

Scott said club chiefs used a secret bank account in Tasmania to pay some of team’s biggest stars under the table.

He has cited impeccable sources with full knowledge of the scheme.

The Hawks won flags in 1986, 1988, 1989 and 1991 after the league began to properly police total player payments.

“Hawthorn were breaching the salary cap,” Scott declares in an explosive podcast to be released this week.

“The only reason Hawthorn held all those star players and had success was that they were paying under the lap. They had a bank account down in Tasmania and they were paying the players that way.

“They were contravening the salary cap and that is why those players stayed at Hawthorn because of the money they were receiving.

“So consequently there has got to be a day of reckoning and that came for Hawthorn.

“They were cash strapped.”

The ‘No Merger’ podcast, exploring Hawthorn’s narrowly aborted merger with Melbourne in 1996, introduces Scott’s allegations by declaring: “What doesn’t quite add up is how could Hawthorn attract and retain such quality players with major financial problems and a meagre membership base.”

The Hawks boasted some of the game’s greatest players through the golden era, including Jason Dunstall, Dermott Brereton, Gary Ayres, John Platten, Chris Langford, Darren Jarman, Robert DiPierdomenico, Gary Buckenara, Michael Tuck, Chris Mew and Andrew Collins.

Scott, the Hawthorn Team of the Century ruckman who saved the club from the proposed merger, gave News Corp an expanded account of the salary cap scheme.

“They were paying wives, they were paying girlfriends. They were doing a lot of things back then,” he said.

“It was like the Roman Empire (at Hawthorn). It was decadent. It is (cheating). But everyone cheats. Everyone was doing it. It was rife through the AFL.”

Scott revealed the league’s long-time salary cap officer, Phillip Ryan, president of Hawthorn from 1968-1979, had warned club bosses about their conduct.

Ryan was the league’s player payments commissioner from 1980 until 1992.

“The late Phil Ryan went out to Hawthorn and said, ‘Listen, you blokes are paying over the salary cap. I’m giving you a warning, but you’re doing it’. But nothing ever came out,” Scott said.

“And the way they were doing it was through Tasmania.

“They put money into an account down there. They (the players) would get a cheque from something that was unrelated to the footy club. Back in those days you could do a lot of different things with bank accounts.”

Asked to reveal his source, Scott said: “No. I can’t. But it’s a very reliable source. Not Joey next door. I was friendly with the people who would know. Someone very, very responsible told me.”

He said the scheme was masterminded by multiple “former Hawthorn administrators”, who have since passed away.

“And that’s why I am talking to you, because they are all dead. None of them are alive,” Scott said.

Scott said he was not sure whether the Hawthorn players involved knew they were pocketing money outside the cap.

“I really don’t know. They probably just put a price on their head — ‘I want $100,000’ — and they wouldn’t care where the $100,000 came from,” he said.

In 1992, Brisbane Bears coach Robert Walls described the salary cap as a joke and named Hawthorn as a club which went “beyond the limit”.

Then Hawks’ president Trevor Coote denied that the club had abused the cap.

“Totally untrue, quite out of order,” Coote said at the time.

Coote was Hawthorn president from 1988 to 1993, taking over the role from Ron Cook who led the club from 1980 until 1987.

The VFL/AFL salary cap was enforced for the first time in 1985.

A moratorium 10 years later allowed clubs to come clean and confess past breaches to the league without the threat of punishment."

[To the top]

They were not the only ones

Look at Geelong with Ottens (whose father played at Sturt) - just for starters

[spert]

There's lots of financial skeletons in the closets of most clubs over the years- Scott always likes to ruffle a few feathers.

[shanegrambeau]

Lucky Ricky Nixon left them for us and became one of the biggest player managers.

[Munga]

It doesn't seem to matter unless you "win" the premiership, then screw you. The AFL knows everything, but they hate the bad stuff in public, so I expect some sort of punishment.

[bigcarl]

The yellow and brown baggers

[Secret Kiel]

Isn't Don Scott an outstanding citizen, first he highlights his credentials as a racist to leverage from Nicky Winmars legacy and now he's throwing people from his own club under the bus for cheating, who he not only had close relationships with but are deceased.

And for what reason, to promote his podcast and line his pockets. What a marvelous person.

[Devilhead]

Isn't Don Scott an outstanding citizen, first he highlights his credentials as a racist to leverage from Nicky Winmars legacy and now he's throwing people from his own club under the bus for cheating, who he not only had close relationships with but are deceased.

And for what reason, to promote his podcast and line his pockets. What a marvelous person.

So you don't think Hawthorn cheated?

Isn't this the point?

[Secret Kiel]

Isn't Don Scott an outstanding citizen, first he highlights his credentials as a racist to leverage from Nicky Winmars legacy and now he's throwing people from his own club under the bus for cheating, who he not only had close relationships with but are deceased.

And for what reason, to promote his podcast and line his pockets. What a marvelous person.

So you don't think Hawthorn cheated?

Isn't this the point?

Irrelevant what I think because my thoughts on the matter would be a wild guess. But I think Scott is showing great disrespect to the families of the deceased people he is throwing under the bus as they are not around to defend themselves. What is he hoping to acheive other than promote his podcast. Can you explain?

[SaintPav]

Isn't Don Scott an outstanding citizen, first he highlights his credentials as a racist to leverage from Nicky Winmars legacy and now he's throwing people from his own club under the bus for cheating, who he not only had close relationships with but are deceased.

And for what reason, to promote his podcast and line his pockets. What a marvelous person.

So you don't think Hawthorn cheated?

Isn't this the point?

Irrelevant what I think because my thoughts on the matter would be a wild guess. But I think Scott is showing great disrespect to the families of the deceased people he is throwing under the bus as they are not around to defend themselves. What is he hoping to acheive other than promote his podcast. Can you explain?

The truth?

[Secret Kiel]

Isn't Don Scott an outstanding citizen, first he highlights his credentials as a racist to leverage from Nicky Winmars legacy and now he's throwing people from his own club under the bus for cheating, who he not only had close relationships with but are deceased.

And for what reason, to promote his podcast and line his pockets. What a marvelous person.

So you don't think Hawthorn cheated?

Isn't this the point?

Irrelevant what I think because my thoughts on the matter would be a wild guess. But I think Scott is showing great disrespect to the families of the deceased people he is throwing under the bus as they are not around to defend themselves. What is he hoping to acheive other than promote his podcast. Can you explain?

The truth?

So he prospers from the cheating and decides to come clean decades later...because he is all about the truth? Possibly but he's gone about it the wrong way if that's the case.

[SaintPav]

Isn't Don Scott an outstanding citizen, first he highlights his credentials as a racist to leverage from Nicky Winmars legacy and now he's throwing people from his own club under the bus for cheating, who he not only had close relationships with but are deceased.

And for what reason, to promote his podcast and line his pockets. What a marvelous person.

So you don't think Hawthorn cheated?

Isn't this the point?

Irrelevant what I think because my thoughts on the matter would be a wild guess. But I think Scott is showing great disrespect to the families of the deceased people he is throwing under the bus as they are not around to defend themselves. What is he hoping to acheive other than promote his podcast. Can you explain?

The truth?

So he prospers from the cheating and decides to come clean decades later...because he is all about the truth? Possibly but he's gone about it the wrong way if that's the case.

Scott was always out there. Came across as a bit of a weird unit; some might say, a flog.

Couldn't really say as I never personally met the man but sounds like he is now an attention-seeking ratings whore.

Perhaps he misses the limelight of his glory years and he knows time is passing him by

Scott and Newman are a bit of an embarrassment. Glad Nicky stitched them up for 100K.

[Devilhead]

No matter it looks like the very real truth has been laid bare by an ex-player privy to the inside workings of a cheating club - and they aren't the only ones as the article intimates.

Next up - hopefully an ex-Geelong player or official comes out down the track and exposes Geelong's performance enhancing drug cheating during their premiership run.

You can throw the Filth's 2010 Cheater's Cup on the pyre as well

[George27]

It doesn't seem to matter unless you "win" the premiership, then screw you. The AFL knows everything, but they hate the bad stuff in public, so I expect some sort of punishment.

The Storm would agree with you on that point !

[Enrico_Misso]

"Manbag" Scott has certainly left his club covered in the brown and gold.