Somewhere along the track in those on going negotiations (For a compromise between ARL and SL) with News/Super League via Ken Cowley, I was made an offer to join them. Acting as an intermediary, Peter Moore conveyed to me it to me. He told me of an opinion by Ken Cowley, that "We would like Ken Arthurson with us. He could assume a supervisory role, a position overviewing the game." The term used for this role was apparently "Past governor" and the workd not too hard - just keeping an experienced eye on things from the top level. The money suggested was $300,000 a year. I was never a chance.
It is a matter of record that my salary package at the League was $145,000 per year - out of which I was paid my own superannuation. In one of the more disgraceful episodes the News Ltd press tried to make capital out of the relatively modest salaries that John Quayle and I earned - salaries that were not within cooee of what their own executives earned, or what they had thrown at an army of football players and Ribot and various other officials they had conscripted. Cowley's own salary figure was $1.7 million was subsequently published. When the Telegraph realised that our salaries were not in the same ball park as the Super League figures, they sunk to the depths of publishing an article about how my wife Barbara was paid $13,000 a year (OUT OF MY OWN SALARY) for secretarial duties and hostessing duties. That was about as low as it got. The arrangement was approved by the League's auditors and the fact was that Barbara rarely stopped working for the League in a variety of ways. Whenever the game had international or an inter state visitors she was involved in catering, functions and helping look after the people fromout of town. Yes, I plead guilty, as chairman, to having a company Lexus from the League, although my own wish was for something less expensive.
The Tele even sent a photographer out to take pictures of my house. In my street we have a neighbourhood watch programme and a neighbour confronted the photographer. The bloke left his card and when I rang him later, he apologised. The sotry I was told was that they were sending a feature writer out to see me and the photographer had beaten the gun. No doubt they were trying to get some story on me living in a fancy house. The fact was I had lived in the same house on Collaroy Plateua for 20 years
