Gold Coast Titans founder Michael Searle reveals why he’s quit the board of the embattled club and why he won’t be back
SELINA STEELE
Gold Coast Bulletin
August 06, 2014 12:00AM
“IF I’M the problem, I walk.”
Michael Searle has always been a realist. Or rather a *realistic optimist.
But at the end of the day, it was the toll on his family and the very real risk of the club he loves — at best relocating and at worst folding — that made him walk away from his position as executive *director of football of the Gold Coast Titans.
“I have disappointments ... I don’t have regrets, I made mistakes but I also had a crack,” the father-of-two said.
“I know I polarised the community ... I never wanted to be a CEO and I never wanted to be an owner ... today is the hardest decision I have ever had to make.”
Searle, who founded the club in 2007, is a businessman and a rugby league *football identity. But he is also a dad who loves taking his son Nate, 13, to the footy to watch his favourite team, the Titans.
The decision to walk from the club that has cost him millions out of his own pocket, and at great expense to his family, is personal.
Because, for all that has been written about the Titans inaugural chief executive and majority shareholder, no man is more responsible for rugby league being played on the Gold Coast.
His list of achievements include:
● $160 million building of Skilled Stadium.
● Re-establishing a Gold Coast football team.
● Establishing the All Stars v indigenous game.
● And pushing for, and succeeding, for an independent commission to take over the running of the NRL.
However, Searle, by his own admission, has been a polarising identity for the *Titans.
And the big question marks over his tenure *include the failed Centre of Excellence which plunged the club into a debt of $25 million and the Titans’ salary cap investigation in 2010 involving former captain Scott Prince. The club is currently being investigated a second time by the NRL for salary cap irregularities.
“The Titans are going to continue to be attacked while I am there. And I take responsibility for that,” Searle said.
“In relation to the Centre of Excellence ... 99 per cent of people on the Coast would not know that we won in the Supreme Court.
“It cost me and my partners $6 million to clear my name.
“It wasn’t us stiffing the contractors ... we paid the builder ... but I am always going to be found guilty in the court of public opinion.
“But while I made mistakes, my conscience is clear. I am walking because I want the hate against the club to stop. The reason we started the club was for us, as a city, to have our own team — a team to be proud of.
“But my kids ... my son Nate and daughter Chandler (17), they have been amazing but I am very aware of the pressure ... my position at the club has put on them. And it’s pressure I don’t want to keep putting on them.”
The Titans board went to great lengths to stress the point that Searle had stepped down at his own instigation.
Chief executive Graham Annesley said: “Michael felt his ongoing presence was a diversion that was having an impact on the club.
“And as someone who was instrumental in the formation of the Titans, he wanted to ensure it had the best possible chance for the future.”
In the end, a chat with his kids and his good mate John Cartwright — who will stand down as head coach of the Titans after Monday’s clash with the Sydney Roosters — reassured Searle he was *making the right decision.
“I don’t think I was emotional until Carty (John Cartwright) said let’s both of us go together ... and we’ll be in the stands when the club wins its first premiership,” he said.
Searle still remains the *Titans majority shareholder with 40 per cent of the stake along with Darryl Kelly and Indian-based businessman Anshuman Magazine.
“It’s time to let go ... it’s the most difficult professional decision I’ve had to make. When I go to the football now it is as a fan.”
Searle’s next moves involve a couple of trips with close mate and former world surfing champion Joel Parkinson and perfecting his barbecued butterfly lamb … and becoming assistant coach of his son’s under-13 team, the Currumbin Eagles.
“A great weight has been lifted from my shoulders but it is my great hope that with me gone — the public can *embrace the Titans again,” Searle said.
