The NRL has knocked back the Manly Sea Eagles' appeal to be cleared of their salary cap breach in a blow to the rugby league outfit.
In March, Manly were fined 750,000 Australian Dollars and had a 660,000 AUD penalty applied to their cap across both the 2018 and 2019 seasons after the Sea Eagles were found with breaches involving 13 players over five years – totalling 1.5million AUD.
Advertisement
Chief operating officer Neil Bare and former CEO and current Sydney Roosters boss Joe Kelly were also banned for 12 months following the findings.
The Sea Eagles appealed the penalty imposed but it was dismissed by the NRL Appeals Committee on Thursday.
Manly CEO Lyall Gorman told NRL.com: "We have 14 days to get back to the NRL with our decision on whether we will appeal the penalty amounts imposed. So the board members need to discuss that decide the merits or otherwise of that."
"This is a proud club and we want to return it to the rightful pedestal it should be on," Gorman added. "We appealed the NRL's decision on behalf of everyone at the club, those affected by this, and the fans as it was the right thing to do.
"We are still in disagreement over several areas of contention, particularly the area of TPAs [Third Party Agreement] being entered to at arm's length from the club.
"We firmly believe we did that but the NRL had another opinion. So now it's important to move on, move forward, put this behind us and get on with the business of getting the Manly Sea Eagles ready for a bumper 2019 season."
Manly missed the NRL finals after finishing the season second bottom in the standings with just seven wins from 24 games.
