I JUST received an email from the grandson of rugby league's greatest player. Dally Messenger III lives in Melbourne and is a Storm season ticket holder.

"Please fight this,'' he wrote. "Please do not accept it. It is too harsh.

''It is not a balanced decision. It punishes loyal and innocent supporters, the coach and loyal and innocent players and staff.

''I've paid for Premium Membership and now I am following a team that cannot possibly win. That will rip the guts out of everything.

''AFL would never make a mistake like this. The persons who fully realised what they were doing should be punished - but not those who gave their best in good faith.

''And especially the Storm supporters and members and innocent players should not be punished.

Since Dally I switched from rugby union in 1907, guaranteeing the future of the new code, today's events are the second-worst thing to happen to our game.

The Super League War brought the sport to its knees but the decision to strip the Storm of two premierships, make them pay back four years worth of prizemoney and prevent them accruing any points this year is a brutal blow to the National Rugby League and to the sport's hopes of expansion.

Sorry Dally, but it is also the correct decision.

Today's media conference was the finest hour in the career of NRL chief executive David Gallop. News Limited - as well as owning the Storm - are half-owners of the competition.

That Gallop has treated them like any other club, when there must have been even the most subtle unspoken temptation not to, should silence his gathering band of critics.

Sadly, rugby league's honour roll now looks like a dumb kid's homework, with asterisks and bits crossed out and scribbled footnotes.

You could almost describe it as the scarred face of the Australian working class, a reflection of this country's chequered, scallywag past.

There's a few things I don't understand about this. I don't understand how News propped up the Storm for millions each year while the club's officials still found money to put in players' pockets.

I don't understand how, if so many of Melbourne's sponsors were connected in some way to News Limited, the company could do with one hand what the other hand knew nothing about.

I don't understand how four years of cheating could be brought down so dramatically by "a filing cabinet in another room".

I don't really think the Melbourne Storm have a future now. I agree with my Back Page Lead colleague, Malcolm Knox, on this. The only difference is that I really wanted them to have one.

I'm in grief for two whole seasons of rugby league - 2007 and 2009 - that so many people put their faith, time and money into that were essentially played for nothing. The two seasons that until today had a premiership team called Melbourne Storm. (That's the club's CEO Matt Hanson and chairman Rob Moodie, pictured above, parading the premiership pennant at Olympic Park three weeks ago.)

The Super League War was about money. It was about television rights. We could get over that.

But many of us have defended the Storm. We've argued that rugby league should have the confidence to move outside its traditional boundaries. That it has something to offer the world. That it wasn't rotten to the core.

We are the people who feel completely betrayed.