Super League was the daddy of them all but the Storm salary cap ‘rort’ has flipped the game on its head once again.

Besides the direct issue of just how Melbourne conned everyone, it’s pushed another major threat to the NRL doorstep – that of a player strike.

Now striking and sport go together like warm beer and a good party and are about as palatable as each other.

It has never sat comfortably with fans that players would threaten not to play without greater pay, even though they seem to be remunerated quite generously already.

A refusal to play a game loved by many, in order to earn more money is that notion reviled by the masses - why?

Especially when many of those fans belong to a worker’s union of their own that fights to protect their rights via possible industrial action.

A fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work – except in sport - it does seem more than a touch hypocritical.

History has a way of colouring the truth and league’s nostalgic glow is no different.

Everyone loves the notion the game was played largely for the love (and for a long time, they were pretty right) but lets not fool ourselves, the game’s very origins are based on one simple principle of financial compensation for effort.

Dust off the history book and it shows that after the big football ‘split’ in England away from the RFU, Australia followed in 1908 care of JJ Giltinan and a 50-quid promise of payment to Dally Massenger. That’s right, the man who the minor premiership is named after and the bloke honoured by the NRL best player award, basically kicked off the code we know as rugby league on the promise of an ‘earn’. That a player should be financially rewarded for effort was right and fair then, just as it remains at its core today.

The fact players can command huge financial reward is mere circumstance.

Yes, Melbourne’s scandal may have revealed the biggest con in Australian sport but it also ripped open a scab on a sore that’s been festering away since JJ paid Dally M to play ball – how much is a player really worth?