David Gallop, in his final day as chief executive of Football Federation Australia, offered a prescient warning to an audience of the state bodies of soccer, as well as the chairman and board.
He presaged his remarks with a semi-apology, describing his message as “an uncomfortable but fundamental necessity.”
“Be vigilant about the demarcation between boards and management,” he said at the November annual general meeting.
“If that collapses, no one will do anything well.”
When ARLC chair Peter V’landys
jetted to California last month to speak to News Corporation chief Lachlan Murdoch and the Silicon Valley tech titans, NRL CEO Todd Greenberg was in the UK
attending the World Club Challenge match. They had effectively swapped roles.
V’landys, by positioning himself as the chief negotiator of TV rights and expansion plans, has become the code’s CEO; Greenberg, by representing the NRL at a match between the Australian and European club champions, as well as sipping afternoon tea with high commissioner George Brandis, had assumed the ceremonial role of a chairman.
This role reversal dates from the moment the professional football codes first drafted independent directors to their boards.
Speculation over the future of Greenberg will continue while V’landys considers whether to renew the CEO’s contract.
Perhaps V’landys will eventually decide on the only man he believes capable of doing the job: himself.
It will require some rewriting of the ARLC constitution but when he left the tarmac for his Californian trip, he crossed Gallop’s demarcation line between board and management.
V’landys will probably prove to be a brilliant negotiator for the code but when his plane touched down in Sydney, he invited his critics to declare: the ego has landed.
https://www.smh.com.au/sport/nrl/ho...ith-flight-to-california-20200302-p545zd.html