Powerbrokers to rule as rugby league gets a camel
Roy Masters
June 29, 2011
Three years of horse trading over the make-up of rugby league's independent commission has produced a camel. A camel, according to the adage, is the final result of the work of a committee asked to design a horse.
A subcommittee of four people representing the NSWRL, the QRL, NRL clubs and News Ltd, has come up with a beast that has the whiff of camel breath, flat feet unsuited to the challenges of rugby league and the potential to bring the game to its knees.
When Roosters' chairman Nick Politis and Titans' managing director Michael Searle began the process in 2009 of extricating News Ltd from its half-ownership of the NRL, an independent commission was greeted with the acclaim similar to the news brought by the three wise men from the east. Instead, we've got the camel they rode on and no wisdom, certainly no boardroom experience of the intricacies of rugby league.
The seven men and one woman nominated by a subcommittee of NSWRL chairman John Chalk, the QRL's Terry Mackenroth, South Sydney chair Nick Pappas and News Ltd's chief operating officer Peter Macourt are hobbled by a lack of inhouse knowledge.
The code shot itself in the foot from the start. The suspicions of NRL clubs, the state leagues and News Ltd ran so deep that no commissioner could be appointed who had been a member of a rugby league board in the previous three years. In the case of former ARL chief executive John Quayle, it was 15 years.
News Ltd, with the connivance of the QRL, ruled out the one man with a corporate memory who could have given the code's new ruling body some credibility.
Instead, we have a commission lacking a standout rugby league person, with Gary Pemberton the only top-of-the-town type akin to the AFL's carpet strollers.
Sure, two of the nominated commissioners - John Grant and Wayne Pearce - are former internationals.
But Grant, who has won business awards for his IT company, is associated with an era in rugby league when i's, not coms, were dotted.
Pearce's dedicated service to Balmain would have won the support of Chalk and his clean image would have appealed to Brian Walsh, one of News Ltd's senior men at Foxtel. But ''Junior's'' recent deliberations on rugby league tactics are confined to arguing crusher tackles with Gorden Tallis on Fox Sports, not experiencing arm twisting and kneecapping in boardrooms.
Sure, commissioners other than Pemberton have experience as directors and managers of some of Australia's biggest companies. But some have not been active in their industries for a decade. Fears of conflict of interest persist.
Mackenroth supported the candidature of Queensland's Mark Williamson, a former executive with Ansett and Optus, prompting the rumour Mackenroth was the godfather of Williamson's children.
Half-bricks, like half-truths, travel further and the rumour mill turned it into solid fact. I rang Mackenroth, a former treasurer in the Queensland government, to check whether he was also the godfather in question. He ridiculed the rumour, while conceding he had met Williamson in his previous employments.
But Williamson does not have the support of the ARL, nor does Jim Marsden, a former chairman of Wests Tigers have the backing of News Ltd, meaning a compromise candidate may have to be found.
An independent commission devoid of corporate memory runs the risks of allowing the administration to rule the game.
While NRL chief executive David Gallop and his team have been in place since 2002, not every decision they make on their own will be right.
Furthermore, what this three-year process of horse trading of potential candidates has really achieved is the rise of a new power bloc in the game: the NRL club presidents.
They are certain to second-guess the commission, as will the parochial QRL, which now has no direct representative on the controlling board.
Still, the purpose of the commission is to replace News Ltd at the next TV-rights deal.
Given Foxtel's recent murmuring about how little it plans to give rugby league, it may be easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than an NRL player to become rich, let alone enter the gates of heaven.
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/rugby-league/league-news/powerbrokers-to-rule-as-rugby-league-gets-a-camel-20110628-1gp8r.html#ixzz1QcBWc1gV
