WAFL: East Fremantle Sharks investigated over alleged salary cap breaches

Sharks president Mark Stewart insists the investigation is targeting “administrative errors” from the 2022 season and has denied any attempt to gain competitive advantage by the club.

The issues include a player superannuation anomaly, the use of match-day awards which could be interpreted as player payments, and a one-off contract payment to a player which wasn’t included in the club’s TPP reporting after he was signed by West Coast as a rookie and spent a year on the AFL club’s list.

But the spectre of a two-game penalty, which was handed to East Fremantle’s bitter WAFL rival South Fremantle earlier this year, now hangs over the Sharks. If there was such a penalty it would almost certainly be applied in the 2024 season.

South Fremantle were fined $25,000, docked eight premiership points (two games) and had their player points allocation and salary cap reduced for the 2023 season after being found guilty of two salary cap breaches from 2021, when the Bulldogs lost the grand final against Subiaco.

Stewart told SEN on Monday that he could not discuss specific details of the alleged breaches because the WAFC audit was ongoing.

“There are some administrative errors that we are talking through with the commission on and addressing,” he said.

“That process is still ongoing, once the audit is finished we will be notified no doubt. We will meet with the commission and be asked some more questions and go through the process.

“I have never been through this process before but like any audit in any organisation, audits can take several weeks and sometimes longer.”

A WAFC spokesman said the commission would not comment until the process was complete.

Stewart was “100 per cent” adamant that there was no attempt to gain competitive advantage by the club.

“There hasn’t been any skulduggery or anything that gives us a competitive advantage. It is an administrative issue,” he said.

Asked if the club had self-reported or whether the WAFC auditors discovered the irregularities, Stewart said: “As they were asking further questions on information I think we both landed on it at the same time. They were asking for some information and as we were handing that over, we saw it.”

He acknowledged that any club would be concerned about the possibility of losing premiership points.

“The audit is still underway and it is not until the audit is finished that you would have that conversation. It has probably got a few more weeks to go yet and then we move to that space,” he said.

“You are always concerned with these sort of things but you can only deal with the cards you have been handed and we will act appropriately.”

Stewart, who was elected East Fremantle president in 2014, did not rule out club officials being held accountable if they were shown to be at fault.

“It is a good question and we are just drilling down and looking at our processes now and the outcome of that will be to look at that definitely,” he said.

“We are currently addressing this issue. What we want to do is get the processes right. Staff have reviews regularly, at the end of the day what we want to do is address this issue with the commission.

“There is no excuse. What we have to do is we have to learn from this. We have to get better. Improve our processes and make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

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East Fremantle face an in-form Peel Thunder in the second semi final this weekend after the Thunder beat Subiaco in a dramatic seesawing qualifying final on Saturday, with 11 players from Fremantle’s list playing for Peel.

Stewart was confident the issue would not distract the Sharks, who have not won a flag since 1998.

“This year the club and the playing group have handled adversity well. We haven’t had a home all year. The women won a premiership, the boys have finished on top. This is just a bit more adversity,” he said.