Rebecca Wilson: Dave Smith’s reluctance to leave Sydney’s eastern suburbs is hurting the NRL
NRL boss Dave Smith lives in Vaucluse in Sydney’s eastern suburbs, where median house prices are up over $3 million.
He drives 5km down the road each morning to his eastern suburbs office, where the NRL has built headquarters that would do a bank or legal firm proud.
His executive team is not exactly your grassroots version either.
There is only one ‘westie’ among them and Shane Richardson left his heartland days behind him years ago.
Smith attended an ice hockey game on his New York holiday earlier this year and declared that Madison Square Garden was the model on which all rugby league venues in Sydney should be based.
Dave did not mention that tickets to that game can cost an average US$78 with the best seats in the Garden upwards of US$200 and that flogging 18,000 padded, leather seats to a relatively wealthy population of more than eight million is not that hard.
Smith talked up the amazing atmosphere at the game. His reflections smacked of a bloke so out of touch with his heartland (where small, rundown stadiums feature warm beer, long queues
and smelly toilets) that it was cringeworthy to hear.
Nevertheless, Smith has declared his view of rugby league is that small stadiums are the new black. No matter that there are not many league fans who can afford $200 a year on tickets, let alone a single match.
Smith has taken a position against ANZ Stadium’s redevelopment strategy in the heart of western Sydney ignoring the home of reigning premiers the Rabbitohs in favour of upgrading the smaller Allianz Stadium.
The West Tigers are in desperate need of a permanent home and Liverpool council are offering to help build a proper stadium in Campbelltown — again in rugby league heartland — but where’s the support from Dave?
Smith is the proud architect of the corporatisation of rugby league. He has surrounded himself with like-minded souls at head office, most of whom have backgrounds in the finance sector, cruise ship management or political lobbying.
Dave would not have noticed the earth moving on Friday when a genuine westie, Katie Page, appeared on the front page of The Daily Telegraph, declaring her intent to sponsor the first women’s AFL team in western Sydney. Make no mistake. This is a genuine kick in the guts for Smith and his deputies.
Page and Gerry Harvey have been pioneering and generous sponsors of rugby league for decades. If she was genuinely pleased with her league investment, there is no way her company logo would have turned up in the AFL.
Page’s allegiance shift has spread to soccer, too, where Harvey Norman now sponsors Friday night A-League. Page does not make these decisions lightly. The former NRL commissioner has smelt the wind and made a move away from a code which she now sees as removed from her customers.
For a woman who lives in the north west and works in the west, her switch should cause Smith serious angst.
So too the appearance in Sydney’s west of AFL boss Gill McLachlan. He has been there, publicly, twice in the last 10 days to oversee the creeping expansion of the game into the league heartlands of the city’s west. Sources close to GWS say he has made several private visits as well.
Smith would not have noticed the shiny GWS Giants’ new headquarters where the AFL has over 60 staff working in league’s epicentre to win the hearts and minds of women, children and ethnic groups.
Dave doesn’t head west often at all. In fact, it would be fair to say that Smith has not held a single media gathering there in recent times (and ANZ doesn’t count).
Too busy to speak to everyday league journalists, Smith spends most of his time spreading the message through media spruikers who choose to pump up their boss through corporate roundsmen.
In recent weeks, league’s main headline makers, the coaches, have been permanently gagged, no longer permitted to comment on refereeing mistakes.
This is because Smith and his suits have absolutely no concept of how many valuable column inches they stand to lose with this ridiculous form of censorship.
A tour of the so-called heartland is way overdue. So, too, crowd comfort at rubbish stadiums and a quick look at the diabolical state of junior league clubs running on the smell of an oily rag.
A seismic shift has occurred in recent months. Smith won’t have felt it in Moore Park but the earth is moving from under him.
BENNETT WRONG
FORGET the idiotic refereeing decision that cost Melbourne Storm a tight match against Manly. The real problem was further north where Johnathan Thurston, a tough nut by any standards, looked like he had gone 10 rounds with Muhammad Ali.
Broncos coach Wayne Bennett said this week players such as Thurston should realise that taking players out late is part and parcel of a hard game. Sorry, coach, but that is abhorrent and obscenely wrong.
Under instructions from coaches willing to go to any lengths to gain an edge, forwards such as Beau Scott will continue to test the rules.
A STARC REMINDER
CAN someone stop crediting Shane Warne with the exceptional form shown by Mitchell Starc. Already a very, very good limited-overs bowler, Starc has come into sizzling form during the World Cup.
Warne made some very nasty, personal attacks on Starc during the Test series and has decided it was those unkind words that turned the paceman into a weapon in recent months.
That is nonsense. Starc was always going to make an impact with the white ball because of the way he bowls at this level in the shorter forms of the game. I will give credit where it’s due — to Starc and pace coach Craig McDermott.
YOU’RE ON THIN ICE
FINALLY, can someone please wake up the world of thoroughbred racing where we have horses returning positive samples to ice? Yes, you read it right. The very dangerous ice, or methamphetamine.
You can talk up your racing carnivals and the big money but until this serious doping issue is cleaned up, the entire industry will remain under a cloud.
