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Give Suzanne Young a fair go

Expert
19th November, 2014
32

The appointment of highly successful businesswoman, Suzanne Young, as chief operating officer of the NRL has drawn some heavy flak in rugby league circles.

That’s before the 46-year-old has struck a blow. By any acceptable standards that’s grossly unfair, and unAustralian.

Young didn’t appoint herself, that was the sole domain of the most boring CEO rugby league has ever been saddled with – Dave Smith.

There was a prophetic picture in Tuesday’s Daily Telegraph. There was Smith, with his usual doom and gloom face, flanking Young to her debut with the media. Young, however, was sporting a smile from ear to ear, and totally at ease – the chalk and cheese of rugby league’s two most senior day-to-day administrators.

If there’s any criticism of Young’s appointment it’s because of Smith. A genuine and proven corporate leader with hardly a drop of rugby league blood flowing through his veins.

A recipe for disaster.

At least Young had her nose broken playing rugby league as a schoolgirl, but she was Australia’s Surf Life Saver of the Year in 1996, where the Daily Telegraph revisited a photograph of her at the time, with a huge smile.

But to the hard-ball rugby league fan, that alone doesn’t cut the mustard.

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Young retaliated with “Sport is in my DNA having coached netball, softball, and hockey”, proving she wasn’t going to be rail-roaded at her media conference debut.

Having covered sport for longer than Suzanne Young has been alive, I offer this friendly advice:

(1) Keep smling, it’s a refreshing change from Smith, and Commission chairman John Grant.

(2) Always be yourself, and don’t hibernate for weeks on end like Smith and Grant.

(3) Rugby league’s the people’s sport, and they want to know, trust, and respect the people who run their game as they did with John Quayle and David Gallop.

(4) They don’t give a rats about the top end of town, so keep the fans informed and up-to-date, be media-friendly and I promise you the media will be Young-friendly in return – it’s a two-way street.

(5) If you don’t know the answer to a question, say so – be totally honest, then get back to the media as soon as possible with the answer.

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(6) And keep that smile ever present, look as though you are enjoying yourself even though it’s going to be tough going for a while until you settle in.

(7) If I see you with a gloom and doom Smith face in the future, I will know, and so will the fans, that you are not only in trouble, but out of your depth.

(8) The future is entirely up to you Suzanne Young, so give it your best shot, you will never have a tougher or more rewarding job.

Finally, all your previous career achievements have been behind closed corporate doors, where the average rugby league fan will never go.

As chief operating officer of the NRL you will be in the limelight daily, you hold the key to the code’s success.

Switch the key on, prove the knockers wrong.

And keep smiling.

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