NRL: Waldron called 'chief rat' of rort

News Ltd chief executive John Hartigan has called disgraced former Melbourne Storm chief executive Brian Waldron the "chief rat" of the NRL club's salary cap rorting.

Hartigan was in Melbourne today to address the Storm players and staff in the wake of the scandal which has rocked the News Limited-owned club and the competition as a whole.

"We'll go forward, we've got an inquiry in place which we have a lot of trust in," Hartigan said.

"We'll root out the bad eggs and we'll go from there."

Waldron - who quit the Storm several months ago to join new Super rugby franchise the Melbourne Rebels before being forced to resign - broke his silence on the salary cap scandal late yesterday.

Waldron claimed he told NRL boss David Gallop several years ago that there needed to be an amnesty period to allow the many clubs he believed were abusing the salary cap to come forward without fear of punishment.

Waldron also said he was prepared to tell News Corp chairman and chief executive Rupert Murdoch the exact nature of the company's A$66 million ($86.38 million) investment in the Storm dating back to its entry into the NRL in 1998.

"I suggest he goes to the police and tells them because I'd be very interested," responded Hartigan.

"I want the truth to come out and that's the furthest from the truth.

"One thing needs to be purely understood here - we've got an inquiry in place and presumably it'll come out.

"Everyone is suggesting 'why didn't we pick it up through the books of the Storm?'

"I think you've got to understand that the majority of these payments came through third party guarantees.

"Now these guarantees were something between player-managers and side letters which were held at the home of one of the officials.

"I'm all for exacting audits, but truly it's very difficult to find that out when they're being held on the side at a person's house."

Acting chief executive Matt Hanson was one of two senior Storm officials dumped by the club's owners last week following revelations that Melbourne had exceeded the salary cap by a total of A$1.7m over several years.

But Hartigan stood by his claim that Waldron was the chief instigator of the widespread breaches.

"I said something last Thursday, he's the architect of this whole badness in this club," said Hartigan.

"And I also suggested at another level that there were rats in the ranks.

"I think it's quite simple, if you draw a line between both of those comments I think it leads to the chief rat, and I have no question or doubt that it's him."

Melbourne were stripped of the 2007 and 2009 premierships, fined heavily and banned from earning any competition points in 2010 for the salary cap breaches.

Hartigan understood why the players might want to contest some of the sanctions, but he said News Ltd would not provide support or funding for any such appeals.

- AAP