Senior executives explained they were trying to sell them, but market conditions made it tricky.
At which point Rupert said: “It’s easy to sell a sports team. You just have to find someone really wealthy and flatter their ego, and they’ll pay overs.
“Believe me, I know. Because I bought the LA Dodgers.”
Melbourne Storm chairman Matthew Tripp and fellow owner Bart Campbell. Credit: Josh Robenstone
News did eventually sell the Storm in 2013 to a consortium led by businessman Bart Campbell. The buyers included gambling industry multimillionaire Matt Tripp, the current chairman.
A club born out of the ill-fated Super League war in 1998 to suit the pay TV needs in Melbourne of News Corp’s Foxtel, the Storm are the most successful on-field football franchise in the nation.
The Storm have been in 12 grand finals, won six (with the ’07 and ’09 titles stripped due to huge salary cap breaches) and have missed the finals only three times in their 28-year history.
It’s an outrageous record built on the brilliance of the players, the club’s ability to hang onto them, the inspired recruiting and, most importantly, the culture under long-time coach Craig Bellamy and football managing maestro Frank Ponissi.
That pair are the best in the business. Bellamy and Ponissi should both end up in the hall of fame.
On Thursday night, the Storm won their 23rd straight season opener under coach Bellamy, thrashing the hapless Eels. He is an incredible leader.
But for all that success, many league fans don’t like the club. While they respect and like Bellamy and the players, the club leaves them cold.
Central to that is the Storm’s brazen and perpetual display of the six premiership trophies at their AAMI Park base in Melbourne and references on their own website to the 2007 and 2009 “grand final wins”.
The Melbourne Storm’s trophy case, including the 2007 and 2009 premierships, which were stripped by the NRL.Credit: Twitter
Just last August, former Storm stars, including Greg Inglis, carried those tainted trophies onto the field in a special presentation to the crowd ahead of a clash with the Broncos.
No matter how you cut it, they didn’t win those premierships. They cheated, were caught and confessed to $1.7 million worth of salary cap breaches, so brazen players signed two contracts – a real one and a fake one for the NRL.
It led to News Corp wanting to jettison them as an asset. Rupert Murdoch loves winning, but he and the company loathed what happened in Melbourne.
The cheating is now semi-ancient history, but the Storm refuse to acknowledge the punishment and continue to say “we won those grand finals”. Well, no, you didn’t.
That’s like stealing $1000 from your neighbour and then saying the money is yours because it’s in your pocket. It’s only there because you nicked it.
Now the Storm are dealing with the universal ire of fans, again, for the club’s role in the Zac Lomax affair.
As we now know all too well, Lomax was granted a release from Parramatta to play in the rebel R360 rugby competition. R360’s start date has now been pushed back to 2028.
The release explicitly stated he could not sign with another NRL club until the end of 2028, unless the Eels approved the deal. At Christmas, the Storm attempted to register a contract for Lomax with the NRL, without securing a release from the Eels. They thought they could bulldoze it through.
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Parramatta objected and stood their ground, fearing the NRL might side with the Storm.
In discovery for the court case, which was settled last week, text messages from Storm chief executive Justin Rodski – appointed in 2021 – to NRL CEO Andrew Abdo were released.
One of them read: “Hi Andrew, not getting anywhere at this point, can you apply the blow torch on Parramatta to get this done.”
In the eyes of many fans, the text was proof that they are bully boys.
For Rodski to write to the CEO of the governing body in that way shows that the Storm’s front office was prepared to trample over anyone and anything to make up for the off-season loss of players like Ryan Papenhuyzen.
It was petulant, entitled and lacked class. As does still holding aloft trophies they cheated to win.