ST KILDA chief executive Archie Fraser says “a simple administrative mistake” cost his club a $10,000 fine for breaching the AFL player payment rules.
Fraser said the Saints, who were “$20,000 to $30,000” over the mark when they made their final player payments lodgement on October 31 last year, had simply accidentally pressed a button twice when paying defender Sam Fisher.
The AFL said St Kilda voluntarily disclosed the breach as soon as it was discovered.
AFL investigations manager Ken Wood confirmed the breach was the result of an administrative error. Wood said the fine took into account the club’s full co-operation.
“It was actually pretty bizarre, it was a fairly simple double payment,” Fraser told afl.com.au.
“We were all in order and unfortunately one of our staff hit the button twice and that made a payment twice and when we found out about it, it had crossed over for the timing of the TPP [total player payments].
“The AFL have been good about it, we’ve explained it with a full explanation and traced it back and they could clearly see it.
“They certainly knew there was no intention to mislead or do anything wrong, so it made it a bit easier that we’d been working pretty closely with them (the AFL) for the previous, probably month really, on our forecasts and our estimates.”
“While mistakes will sometimes occur with electronic transactional payments, we have outstanding employees who don’t deliberately make mistakes, so we're confident that this won't happen again,” Fraser said.
