Ploughing the field for the AFL: how V'landys sees race
Jake Niall
May 29, 2020 — 7.34pm
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When Australian Rugby League's redoubtable chairman Peter V'landys set the target of NRL returning to play on May 28, there was a measure of incredulity among leading AFL figures.
Hawthorn president Jeff Kennett led the charge, declaring that the NRL leadership was "irresponsible" in seeking to play so soon, while his Bulldogs counterpart Peter Gordon expressed "bewilderment" at the rival code's plans.
But V'landys wouldn't be deterred. "There was some pretty - what's the word - harsh rhetoric from down there, that we were irresponsible and all those sort of things, but I ignored it all, naturally," the ARL chairman told
The Age.
Australian Rugby League Commission chairman Peter V'landys.Credit
ominic Lorrimer
"I knew we were on the right path. I knew that we had the facts and figures on our side."
At least on this day, V'landys stands vindicated by events, his forceful handling of high-level government and stakeholders reviving his "second" sport from a COVID-19 coma. Rugby league duly returned on May 28 and the gathering storm this weekend is
Melbourne's NRL team, not the fiscal clouds that threatened the code.
V'landys first came to public attention in Melbourne as the NSW chief executive who sought to disrupt the sacred spring racing carnival, pushing into Victoria's calendar and via the invention of a rich race and putative rival to the Melbourne Cup, The Everest.
Today, he's reached a higher peak by getting the NRL back on screens, a fortnight ahead of the more cautious AFL.
Viewed in some quarters as a spur in Victorian hides, V'landys reckons that he's ploughed the field, as I put it to him, for the AFL in his aggressive push for a May date.
"I have no doubt we've done a bit of the heavy lifting and there were certainly lessons they would've learned along the way, no doubt in my mind," he said of the impact his push for an early start had on the AFL's return. "And I think they've benefited from it."
The comparison between V'landys and AFL chief executive Gillon McLachlan is also a tale of two cities: an out-there Sydney "force of nature" - as more than one source with first-hand dealings called him - and a more strategic, restrained and patient (adopted) Melburnian McLachlan.
And, to borrow from Dickens, the worst of times for the locked-down community has been the best of times for V'landys, as he has become the nation's most famous - and feted - sporting administrator. This weekend, racing and rugby league are the only shows on the televised sporting stage.
"We didn't just set a date and hope for the best. What we did was monitor the infection rate and you know, when we stopped it was 25 per cent," he said.
V'landys did his own statistical analysis of COVID-19, with the help of staff, who were effectively also researching for NSW racing, and a "biological chemical warfare expert who specialises in pandemics", David Heslop.
V'landys said the state and federal governments had "done a good job" in curbing infections but added, "so none of the predictions that they were putting out there came to fruition and our analysis, basically, was more on the mark".
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Having told the
Sydney Morning Herald's Andrew Webster that he had a "giggle" that the AFL was still looking at what he called "bubbles", or what the AFL dubbed "hubs", V'landys doubled down - or added interest - to that critique.
"I had a bit of a giggle because they were still on bubbles, you know, three or four weeks after we had already sort of disregarded them," he said. "And then they caught up, finally. And that's not being critical of them in any way, it's just we were, we were ahead in relation to the analysis and the protocols."
V'landys is better known to racing folk in Victoria than the AFL. As one prominent sporting official from outside the AFL explained, V'landys is an exemplar of Sydney's tradition of the strongman chairman, in the mould of the Australian Olympic Committee's John Coates.
It is telling that V'landys is the shot-caller, not NRL's (acting) chief executive, as in more governance-conscious AFL. "It's partly Sydney-Melbourne but it's also in the DNA of the codes," said the senior sporting official.
V'landys has a respectful and affable relationship with Victorian sports and racing minister Martin Pakula, despite spot fires over the former's incursions into Melbourne racing, and has dealt cordially with Victorian premier Daniel Andrews.
Dealings with McLachlan, though, have been entirely social. "I've met Gil socially a couple of times and, you know, he's a really good fella, a really good bloke, and I think he does a very good job. So I've got no problem with Gil. As I said, I've only met him socially and he's a very affable guy that you'd enjoy having a beer with."
Sporting people who know V'landys have noted the modus operandi: he gets on the phone to a political connection - presumably ministers of the crown - and lobbies for his need, such as clearing quarantine hurdles for the New Zealand Warriors (as he did).
He announces it to the media. The government(s), when asked, says, 'No, that's premature'. Then, a week or two later, it happens.
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Politically, it's been helpful for V'landys to have Sydney's most bellicose voice, Alan Jones, in his stable - a reality underscored when NSW premier Gladys Berejiklian caved in to the (now departed) broadcaster's demand for the Opera House to be lit up with a sail promoting The Everest.
"I think a good CEO or chairman or anyone for that matter has got to be somebody that's got a lot of connections or relationships," V'landys said of his lobbying.
"I have built up my relationships over many years, so naturally - and I don't take advantage of them, I'll only do it as an emergency. And that's what I've done here. You don't abuse the privilege, but when you need it, you use it."
He has been granted the emergency powers, as in wartime, of de facto CEO, as chairman of rugby league, while remaining CEO of Racing NSW - an unprecedented arrangement.
"And I've always said that if there was an emergency, I'd have to front up." He describes himself as "can-do person, not a cannot person".
V'landys' next ahead-of-the-COVID-curve mission is to make socially distant crowds happen by July 1, for which the NRL would potentially deploy "infrared technology" - a camera that took temperatures.
"We believe, that on the same analysis and the same assessment, that we can have crowds, because it's all about risk," he said.
Viewed by some AFL figures with a mix of gobsmacked disdain then grudging respect, V'landys is the toast of a Sydney media, for whom he's delivered copious copy.
"That's what we kept saying is, 'We've set ourselves the 28th of May but we can always change it, but if we're right, we don't want to be flat-footed when it comes to the 28th of May.'"
A flat-footed Peter V'landys? That's more unthinkable than anything he seeks.
https://www.theage.com.au/sport/afl...l-how-v-landys-sees-race-20200529-p54xuh.html
