VIDEO ABOVE: Sacked Melbourne Storm director Peter Maher doesn't let up on the debacle that is the way the NRL has handled the club's salary cap cheating.

Maher says News Limited will now almost certainly pull the legal challenge the Storm is making against the NRL over the lack of 'due process' exercised when the club was fined, stripped of premierships and 2010 premiership points.

One thing is becoming clear - the NRL's wish for this story to go away is far from being a reality.

PLAYING NOW: Neil Mitchell speaks to the man who said he gave News Limited plenty of warning about the Melbourne Storm salary cap rorting issue, months in fact, before the NRL penalties were handed down.

Tom Reilly - The Age Online: Senior News Limited executives were told of salary cap breaches at Melbourne Storm as early as February but did nothing to address the issue at the time, the club's former acting chief executive, Matt Hanson, has told The Age.Mr Hanson's claims contradict News Ltd's version of events and call into question the veracity of statements by News chief executive John Hartigan that the company became aware of the breaches only in mid-April, days before the scandal broke.

Mr Hanson, 37, said he alerted Storm board member and News Ltd executive Craig Watt on February 23, telling him that he had ''inherited some big problems with the salary cap''.

Mr Hanson said that in mid-March he also contacted News Ltd employee and Storm board member Frank Stanton and told him that the club was about $700,000 over the cap and was being investigated by the NRL.

Mr Stanton allegedly replied that he had dealt with salary breaches at the club before, and said: "You just need to play it with a straight bat and try to get through [the NRL audit]."

Mr Hanson is one of five ex-Storm officials whom Mr Hartigan last week labelled as ''rats'' for their alleged involvement in salary cap rorts. ''The methods they used were deliberately designed to deceive others, cheat the system and avoid detection,'' Mr Hartigan said.

In his interview with The Age, Mr Hanson also rejected claims by the News Ltd boss that he assisted a recent investigation into the club's finances in only a ''very limited way''. He said that at a meeting with auditors from accounting firm Deloitte on April 23, he discussed the breaches at Storm and detailed his conversations with Mr Watt and Mr Stanton.

After that meeting, he said, he also responded to written questions put by investigators.

''If a record of that conversation wasn't included in the Deloitte report, then why not?'' said Mr Hanson of the April 23 meeting.

''And if it was, why wasn't it mentioned in the News Ltd summary handed out last week and why did John Hartigan say I only co-operated in a limited way?''

Mr Hanson's lawyer, John Sinisgalli, who attended the meeting with Deloitte, said there was now a need for the Deloitte report to be made public and raised the possibility of suing News Ltd for defamation.

News, which owns Storm as well as half of the NRL and has major stakes in Foxtel and Fox Sports, maintains it first became aware of the salary cap issues in the week before the scandal broke on April 22, when it was announced Storm would play for no points in 2010 and had been stripped of its 2007 and 2009 premierships.

Mr Hartigan is now likely to come under pressure to sack Mr Watt and Mr Stanton, less than a week after he stood down the club's four independent directors. At a media conference on Thursday, Mr Hartigan said he was unaware that any News Ltd directors had knowledge of breaches before him.

When Mr Hanson's allegations were put to Mr Hartigan last night, he strongly defended News Ltd directors. ''Our directors put themselves up to be interviewed by Deloitte and I'm telling you that there's nothing in the report in any way that puts them in anything but a proper governance position,'' he said. ''They have been exonerated of any problem.''

News Ltd spokesman Michael Sharp insisted Mr Hanson had put no figure in conversations with the company's directors or Deloitte. ''Matt Hanson did not put a dollar number to Craig Watt, Frank Stanton or Deloitte,'' Mr Sharp said.

He confirmed that Mr Hanson had a conversation with Mr Watt in February, but said that only related to issues Mr Hanson had already informed the board of that month.

Mr Sharp said: ''Matt Hanson informed the entire Storm board that the club was in dispute with the NRL over four salary cap issues relating to 2009. Those four issues were the calculation of FBT on agents' fees, the termination payment to Dallas Johnson, a sum of $25,000 paid toward the players' end-of-season trip and the $40,000 in appearance fees paid to player Cameron Smith.

''Hanson informed the board that these were technical breaches in early February and he believed all these issues could be successfully resolved with the NRL,'' Mr Sharp said.

''Frank Stanton and Craig Watt were unaware of any other salary cap issues before the NRL informed them of major problems shortly before April 22. To suggest otherwise is defamatory.''

Mr Hanson tendered his resignation on April 22, but this was rejected by Storm's directors. He was then suspended on full pay until last Thursday, when Mr Stanton told him he had been sacked.

Although Mr Hanson is putting at risk a severance payment from News Ltd by speaking out about the salary cap breaches, he told The Age it was important to set the record straight.

He said: ''When you see your photo on the front page of the paper under the headline 'Rats face jail' you think: 'What's my mum going to think when she sees this?'

''This is not the person who I am,'' Mr Hanson said. ''Anybody who knows me knows I'm not dishonest. I was stunned by the way I was treated and how I was branded a rat by John Hartigan.

''I always tried to do the the right thing by the club in what were often trying circumstances and I certainly don't deserve to be hung out to dry.''

'We will forever remain'

Read the statement axed Melbourne Storm chairman Dr Rob Moodie's statement. Dr Moodie was out of the country last week when he was axed by News Limited, the financial backers for a Deloittes report it seems few people have read which damned the Storm over salary cap rorts from 2006-2010.