FootyGoss :: All the Latest AFL and WAFL Breaking News

Perth Football Club To Appeal Salary Cap Fine

After an investigation running for the last three months, the Perth Football Club has been informed by the Western Australian Football Commission that it has been found guilty of providing inaccurate information to the Commission in its 2008 player payments declaration and has been fined $20,000 out of a maximum of $25,000.

The Club was never charged with actually breaching the salary cap and the investigation found that there was no breach of the salary cap.

The Club considers that the penalty is far too harsh.

Acting CEO Rod Basell said:

“Everything was fully documented on Club files and it is not known how the amounts didn’t end up in the declaration.  When the Commission looked into the matter all the paperwork was there.  The salary cap for 2008 was $175,000.  Following a thorough and far reaching investigation the Salary Cap Officer found that we should have declared $167,913.75 rather than the $160,675 we did declare.  Even the amount we should have declared was $7000 below the $175,000 salary cap for 2008 and, of course, the cap has gone up to $200,000 this year.”

Basell continued:

“The Club is prepared to accept that it should have been more careful but thinks the penalty imposed, $20,000 out of a possible $25,000 is way over the top.  We didn’t breach the salary cap or even come close to it.  One of the ‘disclosure errors’ referred to by the Commission related to an amount of $1 in relation to player.  The Commission says it is keen to send a message and that’s fine but account also has to be taken of the minor nature of the breach and the individual circumstances of the Club being fined.  The Commission has not left itself much room to move if it ever finds out about a serious breach.  We will be appealing.”