It's stark raging madness
By Phil Gould
January 23, 2005
The Sun-Herald
There are no secrets in rugby league. We live in a very small world. You can be sitting, say, in a limousine driving around the Gold Coast, bagging someone you don't like in rugby league, and before you know it the content of your conversation floats through the stratosphere to the person you have been criticising.
And there is a lot of bagging going on in rugby league.
The game is still very much divided. Many go to great lengths to proclaim all is sweet and rosy. But even the brightest of rose gardens carries thorns and this garden is full of prickles.
If we needed more evidence of the division in the game, it was provided during the week with the announcement that News Ltd was nominating two new members to the NRL board - recently retired Broncos star Gorden Tallis and Katie Page, managing director of retailer Harvey Norman.
A lot of people in rugby league are bagging the appointment of Tallis. You won't hear them speak out publicly against Tallis's new position. Job security demands they toe the party line.
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Privately, though, there are plenty on both sides of the fence feeling more than a little embarrassed and even shocked about the in-your-face nature of this appointment.
I agree with them.
The appointment embarrasses our game. It puts the division in the game out there for all to see and gives a direct insight to other codes of the amateurish and self-serving way big decisions are made in league.
I have nothing against Tallis as a bloke, but my first reaction to the news he had been appointed to the board of the NRL was that it was a gee-up.
I just don't see Tallis in this kind of role.
What are his qualifications for a position of this importance?
What does it say about the criteria for selection on the NRL board that we virtually take off this bloke's dirty footy gear and sit him straight down in the boardroom to make decisions about the future of rugby league?
If I were sitting on the NRL board I might be thinking its status had just been reduced to token value and that perhaps it wasn't as important as I'd first thought.
If the NRL had said it wanted to make a position available on the board for a player representative and the players had elected Tallis to represent them, I would have said good as gold.
But that is not how Tallis has found his way on to the NRL board.
This appointment has come via a very different channel and for very different reasons.
I am not bagging Tallis. I am bagging his appointment.
I know very little of Tallis other than what we have seen on the football field.
He may make a very good board member. I will reserve judgement and give him a chance.
But Tallis has spent most of his professional life working off a coach's game plan.
Will he be working off his own game plan from now on?
My only real experience with him came 10 years ago during the week the Super League war broke out.
I was working at the ARL headquarters when Tallis and his manager came to discuss a possible contract with the ARL.
Tallis sat opposite, staring at me with what appeared to be a very untrusting look.
His manager said Gorden wanted $600,000 a year and an up-front payment of $300,000.
Although Tallis was showing a lot of potential, this was an unacceptable request. I told him the ARL was not paying Test players or even the Australian captain anything like that.
At that stage of his career Gorden was still playing interchange football off the bench with St George.
I told him I rated him as an emerging Origin player (he had played Origin off the bench in 1994) and that I could pay him accordingly. It was a lot less than the asking price, though. His manager said he had no option but to take him to Super League.
I then asked his manager to explain to Gorden that if he went to Super League he would not be selected in representative teams and would miss out on the opportunity to play Origin for Queensland and Tests for Australia. The ARL had made it perfectly clear that all defectors would be ineligible for representative football.
They left immediately, with Tallis giving me the eye as he walked off.
From that conversation, Tallis came to the conclusion that I had said he was nothing more than a bench player and would never be good enough to play rep football.
It was a very poor interpretation of our conversation and it would score zero out of 100 in a comprehension exam but it obviously suited Gorden to think that's what I had said.
As the song goes, a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.
He has even been quoted a number of times over the years as saying that my comments had inspired him to do better and all he'd wanted to do was prove me wrong.
He has also been quick to give it to me in the media any time he gets a chance. I guess he sees that as some form of getting square.
It was no skin off my nose.
I have been lied about by the best of them, so some misplaced barbs from Gorden Tallis did not register with me.
And to Gorden's credit he was always apologetic and quite congenial when I saw him in person at the games. He strikes me as a good bloke.
My concern about his appointment to the NRL board has nothing to do with anything he has said about me.
I just find it amazing that News Ltd has rewarded him with a place on the board less than four months after he retired from the game.
Why Tallis? Maybe the NRL genuinely thinks he will be a star. Maybe it thinks he will turn out to be the best administrator the game has had.
Or maybe it believes he shares the same view of the world as the faceless people who really control the game.
