Why can't the NRL find a CEO?
Date
February 19, 2016 - 8:58PM
Chris Barrett
Sports Writer
"Why would I want to do that?" says one person who was approached by the Australian Rugby League Commission's headhunters about the vacant chief executive's position.
"I'd have to take a pay cut."
It was a question to which there could have been a few different answers: I'd have to take on the clubs; or, I'd have to be on the back page of the paper every second day; or even, given recent events: I'd have to take the call the next time a player performs a simulated sex act with a dog.
Hyperbole aside, whatever their reasons, there are a string of administrators from V8 Supercars boss James Warburton to Geelong Cats chief Brian Cook, who have been linked with the NRL's top job but want nothing to do with it.
Applicants from the league world were due to be interviewed by ARLC nominations committee members John Grant, Jeremy Sutcliffe, Catherine Harris and Wayne Pearce this week, and a shortlist of four is expected to be determined by the end of next week.
As the search beyond league circles continues one reason given to Fairfax Media for outsiders shunning the opportunity has been a supposedly limited anticipated base salary.
Much has been made about the highly-paid top executives inside League Central such as the now departed chief operating officer Suzanne Young and strategy chief Shane Richardson. In this respect there appears a comparative air of austerity in the corridors at Driver Avenue as the code winds towards appointing a successor to Dave Smith.
Sources say some potential CEO contenders were told the base pay would be in the range of $900,000 to $950,000 or more than $1 million for the "right" person.
That is less than the reported $1.5m Smith was on during his three years in charge but is certainly significantly more than what his predecessor David Gallop collected during his decade running the game. It would serve as a pay rise, and a good one, to anyone involved in the game.
Furthermore, it is not as badly out of kilter with the market, at least on the surface. According to the AFL's annual report of last year its chief executive Gill McLachlan's salary is on a base $1.3m. Australian Rugby Union chief Bill Pulver is on $735,885, according to the ARU's 2015 annual report. Cricket Australia's long-time CEO James Sutherland, meanwhile, is said to be on somewhere in the vicinity of $1.5m plus bonuses. It is that extra earning capacity that catapulted the previous AFL chief Andrew Demetriou's package to $3.8m in 2013. Of that lofty income, $2.33m was in bonuses and that is where McLachlan is ahead of the pack (although for perspective not as far ahead as NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, who it was revealed this week collected $US34m in 2014).
How a bonus structure would be put together for whoever the new NRL CEO is remains unclear but with the next broadcast deal already done there is no potential reward for locking those rivers of gold away.
A game which has a salary cap at its competitive core will not have one for its top job, though, insists ARLC chairman and interim CEO Grant, although it is a statement made with a slight caveat.
"We will pay the right salary for the right person," Grant told Fairfax Media. "But that needs to recognise our obligation to return as much revenue as possible back to the game.
"You have to remember that this is a complex and demanding job … there is no other job like it.
"People who have the capability to meet the demands of this role don't grow on trees. But we have had no pushback from candidates in terms of remuneration."
That may well be the case but there is no doubt the package that has been floated has been a deterrent for a certain level of external would-be CEOs approached during the search run by recruitment company Crown & Marks, as has the reputation of Grant as a micro-manager.
However, if the result is, as most with skin in the game are tipping, that a league official will land the job, then for once the clubland and head office will be in alignment.
Another interloper promises to create only more friction than there was during Smith's time, which is why there have been separate pushes among the clubs for Todd Greenberg and Jim Doyle.
Michael Brown, the NRL head of commercial and the CEO of next year's World Cup, is about as well credentialled a candidate as there is at League Central owing to his record in the AFL, football and cricket, but he is already charged with the next big-ticket item for the administration - growing non-broadcast revenue. Meanwhile, Warren Wilson, who resigned as Penrith group chief on Thursday, was told this week he would not be involved in the interview process.
With the game entering into a period of consolidation following the $1.9bn rights deal a steady and street-smart hand with a firm footing in the code is what clubs are plumping for.
"The game doesn't need an innovator right now, it just needs a stable figure and someone who can relate well with the clubs," one senior club figure said.
"The biggest problem with the NRL is they don't talk to the clubs."
Another said of Doyle, the former NRL COO to Smith and now the New Zealand Warriors chief: "He knows the commissioners, he knows the clubs. We trust him. He can bring us all back under the same tent."
If Greenberg, already inside the big tent, would be a bookmaker's favourite then Doyle would be the danger. A self-made multi-millionaire it is said that he did not always see eye to eye with Smith during his time at NRL headquarters before quitting for Auckland in 2014.
Doyle is also regarded as the kind of strong character who, with knowledge of Grant's shortcomings, would not be afraid to push back at a hands-on chairman.
Comfortably re-settled across the ditch the question the New Zealander would have to ask himself in the event he was offered the post is if he needs the drama.
An often thankless job, as Smith discovered almost from day one, it is not one where you can escape the blowtorch of public scrutiny for days at a time let alone weeks and months as is the case for someone like Sutherland, who has run cricket for nearly 15 years.
It brings to mind one of Gallop's parting remarks on his final day as CEO in 2012.
"The next person to last 10 years, I'll be the first person to take them to lunch."
