Smith pleads innocence in Storm scandal - Sports News - Fanatics - the world's biggest events

Smith pleads innocence in Storm scandal

By Ben Horne 20/07/2010 06:44:47 PM Comments (0)

Melbourne NRL captain Cameron Smith has again pleaded his innocence in the Storm's salary cap scandal and said the two contracts he signed were identical.

Smith said on Tuesday that the salary on both contracts was identical, and that he was under the impression the contract he signed was going to be under the salary cap.

The Queensland and Test star was adamant he had no idea what was done with the contracts after he signed them.

"The two contracts they talk about, the first one was an agreement that I was going to stay at the Storm, the second one was my NRL contract," he told Sky Sports Radio.

"They were both the same. I was always of the understanding the contract I signed was always going to be under the salary cap.

"Not at any stage was I told there were going to be payments outside the cap, obviously because we all know that's illegal.

"I'm not too sure what was done with the contracts that were signed.

"Obviously my job is to sign the contract under the instructions of my manager and then once I do that I walk out of the room and I've signed with the Storm and my job's to play football.

"Whatever happens in the administration office is clearly not up to the players."

Smith said his manager Isaac Moses has told him they are innocent of any knowledge of the cheating, and expressed his relief at being exonerated by the Deloitte investigation.

"He (Moses) said we can be confident we've done nothing wrong," Smith added.

"That's why it's disappointing. All the players are very disappointed that people think we had knowledge of the things that went on and we were very pleased and relieved when the report was finalised and obviously the boss of News Limited John Hartigan, came out and said that no players or the officials had any knowledge of what was going on."

News limited expressed disappointment that no players were willing to speak as part of the investigation, but Smith said they were always hoping for a time when they could talk.

"I think all of us were given less than 24 hours notice going in and we were a little bit unsure of how the interview was going to go, who was going to be there," Smith explained.

"So obviously we got onto the managers straight away and they advised us not to go into that meeting the following day and then after that it came into the rep period and it was fairly busy.

"I don't think there was another time set for another interview at that stage. We had nothing to hide clearly, we all spoke to our managers and said that we'd like to set a time with some representation there for us, be it a lawyer or our manager but that never eventuated.

"Obviously with the report being finalised it must not have been so important at the end."

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