If Quayle is 'past it' then what's Murdoch?
Roy Masters
April 30, 2011
APRIL 30 has dawned, and rugby league has no independent commission, despite a front-page News Ltd headline in February declaring the media company would surrender its half-ownership of the code to a board of eight impartial directors today.
The Sunday Telegraph's banner headline of February 13 followed the Indigenous All Stars match the previous evening on the Gold Coast, where news of News Ltd's exit had been leaked.
It prompted excited chatter among the VIP guests at a corporate function at the Titans' headquarters near their Robina stadium.
Six weeks later, some of the same guests assembled to celebrate the 80th birthday of rugby league's longest-serving official, Titans chairman Paul Broughton, a lunch hosted by his chief executive, Michael Searle.
Broughton has been a St George player, a Balmain and Newtown coach and the NSWRL special projects executive dispatched to the Gold Coast during the Super League war to act as chief executive of the Chargers, a club killed off in the eventual 1997 ARL-News Ltd peace treaty.
He chose a dozen guests to share his celebration on March 25, including John Singleton, who sacked him at Newtown, ARL chief executive Geoff Carr and former boss of the Gold Coast Bulletin and NRL board member Roy ''Rocky'' Miller.
More significantly, NRL chief executive David Gallop and former ARL boss John Quayle attended.
It was the first time the pair had been in the same room, apart from a couple of centenary functions in 2008 when they politely acknowledged each other.
Quayle has been the big rock sitting on the independent commission moraine as it makes its glacially slow pace to the sea.
The NRL clubs voted unanimously to have him appointed a commissioner, possibly as chairman, and he has the support of the NSWRL.
However, News Ltd publications insist on saying he is ''past it'', while the QRL is also known to be opposed to him.
News Ltd's opposition is understandable: Quayle cost the media empire $500 million when he refused to roll over when the Super League tanks rolled into ARL HQ in Phillip Street.
The QRL's opposition might be centred on a quote attributed to Quayle way back when they were dragging their heels in the march to the commission, seeking more voting rights.
Quayle was supposed to have said this was typical of his experience with Queensland during his long stewardship of the ARL: the Maroons acted out of self-interest, not national interest.
If Quayle indeed said this, or his words were quoted by others, he is dead right: Queenslanders will always put the state first and the game second.
But there is a suspicion Quayle was being used as a pawn in a battle between the clubs and the state leagues. The truth is Quayle would probably have sympathy with Queensland's case.
He has never been in favour of clubs controlling the game. He knows that if the clubs manipulated the commissioners, every dollar coming in would go back to them, particularly with private owners, such as Russell Crowe, Nathan Tinkler, Scott Penn and Eric Watson, now owning half the clubs.
One of Quayle's saddest days as ARL boss was when Kerry Packer's lieutenants marched into his office during the Super League war and forced him to spend the code's $20 million bank balance.
If Quayle became a commissioner - and it's known he believes it would be wrong for him to be chairman - he would seek to build cash reserves and fund development.
Yet he is accused of being too close to Roosters chairman, Nick Politis, with whom he shares ownership of a Hunter Valley grape and olive property.
Politis is a club man; Quayle is a league man, and I suspect they have agreed to disagree on the role of a commissioner.
News Ltd still carries brutal grudges from the Super League war, and it's been assumed Gallop, a former News Ltd lawyer, would not want to work with Quayle looking over his shoulder.
GALLOP has been marginalised in the independent commission process but any suggestion Quayle would not co-operate with Gallop should have been dispelled at the Paul Broughton birthday lunch.
Quayle sympathised with Gallop, ''now that Paul has learned to text and email'', a reference to Broughton's missives to headquarters.
He told of the time when he was first appointed to Phillip Street, and Broughton, then working outside the game, bombarded him with regular 7am phone calls and scribbled notes on suggested initiatives.
''What am I going to do with this bloke?'' a bewildered Quayle said to one of his assistants.
''Employ him,'' came the response, and so Broughton joined the NSWRL, and pioneered metric measurements to the field, enhanced the role of women, created special programs for indigenous youth, and introduced modified games for the hearing-impaired.
Broughton is still very active, and Quayle is a decade-and-a-half younger than him.
Which raises the question: If men such as Broughton - at 80, the same age as News Corporation chief Rupert Murdoch - are still performing, and coach Wayne Bennett expects to win a premiership at a third club by the time he is 66, why is Quayle ''past it''?
