Last week news emerged that Perth Glory would be banned from the A-League playoffs for breaching salary cap regulations. That certainly piqued our interest given that Irish international Andy Keogh is the team's star man up front.
And if Irish interest was piqued by the initial news, the fact that Keogh is actually at the centre of all the hullabaloo down under is even more interesting.
Perth had comfortably qualified for the play-0ffs with two games currently still to play before news emerged that they would be unable to take their place among the top six teams for some seemingly blatant salary cap violations.
According to the Herald Sun, a couple of years ago Glory decided they were bit sick of being also-rans so they went out looking for some marquee names.
Youssouf Hersi, Diogo Ferreira and Dino Djulbic were signed, while Danny Vukovic returned to the club after a failed loan stint in Japan.
But negotiations were well advanced with a far bigger catch.
That man was Dubliner Andy Keogh and "after some haggling, a two-year, $700,000 deal was struck with Glory". That contract put Perth on the edge of their $2.55m salary cap. To give them a bit of wiggle room, Glory apparently decided to be a bit creative with their accounting and instead of writing up Keogh's $350,000 a year, his salary was submitted to the authorities as $160,000.
The rest of Keogh's wages were paid to family members and as added benefits such as car rentals and accommodation. It is thought that Keogh knew nothing of the various payment methods until he had arrived in Australia and he was subsequently unaware of any illegalities.
Although Keogh was not the only recipient of less than perfectly accounted for wages, he was the most high profile. The Herald Sun have said that the scale of the deception left investigators "gobsmacked at the raft of secret, systematic and undisclosed payments".
Glory have indicated that they will appeal the ruling but it has certainly put a dampener on what had been a great season for Keogh in the A-League.
