NRL bloated and bereft following Shane Richardson’s appointment, writes Rebecca Wilson
Rebecca Wilson
The Daily Telegraph
January 24, 2015 12:00AM
A JOYOUS summer of sport was rudely interrupted by the announcement this week that former Souths and Cronulla boss, Shane Richardson, would join the overstaffed and overpaid NRL executive team as “head of game strategy and development”.
Big Richo, a veteran of league administration with what can only be described as a polarising approach, joins three other league executives who have, it appears, exactly the same role. In essence, the Richo gig now brings to four the number of people it has taken the Rugby League Commission to muster as replacements for former boss, David Gallop.
NRL chief Dave Smith, who continues to hire executives faster than he can spend the big bucks from his broadcast rights agreement, has vehemently defended the appointment even though it is bleeding obvious that the role is precisely the job that he is supposed to be doing himself.
“Shane is a good and strong appointment,” he told me this week. “He will provide deep insights into future structures we want for the game and whether that be expansion or draft.”
Last time I checked, Dave Smith was charged with doing that job, as was his football boss, Todd Greenberg and his deputy, Suzanne Young.
In fact, when Young was appointed late last year, I recall similar words being used to describe her role.
Aside from the ridiculous salary bill and top heavy nature of NRL headquarters, where expensive consultants and bosses far outnumber actual workers, Richardson’s appointment proves Smith, Young and Greenberg
are not capable of taking rugby league anywhere near where former banker, Smith, promised they would.
For those with short memories, Gallop was shown the door by Commission chairman, John Grant, because he was not “proactive” enough.
Ten years in the job and almost that preparing for it from within league was not enough to satisfy the egotistical Grant who saw Gallop as too much of his own man.
The hiring of Smith, the chairman claimed several weeks later, was a revolutionary move that would put league on the map as a groundbreaking football code to outdo all of the others.
How a banker with no sporting administration experience was going to deliver on the grand plan is now being answered in the worst possible way.
Just keep adding zeroes to executive salaries, hire more half million dollar executives and hope one of them might have the answers.
A glance at the newspaper files will surprise even the most cynical of us as Smith embarked on making statements and promises on which he is yet to deliver. Expansion, the draft, ‘future strategies’ have been all the rage for two years but not a single move has been made to make any of this happen.
Only a South Sydney grand final win has saved Smith from the departure lounge. Crowds are down, the game has stalled in neutral for several seasons and the chief executive continues to pump out the same “vision” of expansion, draft chatter, bigger audiences than the AFL and a future broadcast agreement that he keeps promising will make our eyes water.
The media message is now being told to journalists outside the game because those within it are jaded and wary of printing any of the rubbish peddled out of a media department big on talk and short on experience.
A footnote to all of this is that Smith has conveniently ignored that two of the blokes hired to do his job (Greenberg and Richardson) turned a blind eye to violence against women by players while they ran their clubs. These are the men who are charged with making the game more female friendly and as egalitarian as the AFL.
Where, may we now ask, is John Grant and the trumped up Commission members? Are questions being asked? Does Grant believe in accountability and is anyone home on the issue of executive salaries? Can someone suggest that perhaps one of these pay packets could fund a junior development program for a year?
Smith returns from holidays on Monday. Little does he know that Richardson, his new lieutenant, has his eye on the big prize. He won’t admit it publicly but Big Richo has always wanted to run the game and now he is poised to make his run. There is no doubt that only club factions could put a halt to his ambitions.
In the meantime, the rugby league fan is the loser. Head office is at sixes and sevens, the engine room has gradually been replaced by a group of ambitious, highly paid officials with big egos and the game is no closer to solving its dilemmas than it was when Smith took the reins.
If January, 2015 is any indicator, it is going to be a long, long year.
