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The disgraces kept surfacing last week. The disgraceful sacking of David Gallop as ARLC chief exec, the disgraceful behaviour of ARLC chairman John Grant, and the continued disgraceful behaviour of brain-dead swimmers Nick D’Arcy and Kenrick Monk.
How Grant could be the final step in trapping Gallop is just as disgraceful as the sacking.
There have been rumblings about Gallop’s future for years from far lesser light rugby league administrators not fit enough to lick Gallop’s shoes, let alone wear them.
But when you have a power-drunk chairman listening to no-ability lesser lights, then supporting them, Gallop’s days were obviously, and unfairly, numbered.
For Grant to tell a media conference Gallop was leaving by “mutual consent” was utter bollocks.
Grant made Gallop’s position untenable last Monday when he was, by far, the very best man for the job as he’s proved over a decade.
Right throughout some of league’s worst moments on and off the field, Gallop has been the man to calm stormy waters, deal fairly with offenders who have tainted the image and name of rugby league, and deal with those offended.
He was always a quality communicator within the code, and with the media.
There were many sticky moments.
But problems were solved, and Gallop always had a firm, but fair, grip on his position.
In the near 50 years I’ve been a sportswriter-sportscaster, dealing with hundreds of administrators from so many sports, David Gallop is right up there in the top four, along with Sir Donald Bradman, one of Gallop’s predecessors, John Quayle, and John O’Neill.
Sir Donald was just as remarkable an administrator as he was the world’s undisputed greatest batsman. There was never any danger of him ever being sacked.
Nobody would have been game enough to take him on. The Don ruled with a rod of iron.
I had many chats with him during the lead-in and early days of Kerry Packer’s World Series Cricket in 1977. Sir Donald firmly believed he had let cricket down globally by not averting the Packer charge.
In his mind, it was his only failure.
Nothing could be further from the truth. There was no way Sir Donald had the ammunition to fire to beat the billionaire who owned a television station, and wanted the world’s best cricketers playing exclusively on his Channel 9.
The combination was a no brainer.
Quayle suffered the same fate when Rupert Murdoch set up Super League two decades later, roughly along the same lines. Like cricket, rugby league was pillaged.
But during his 13 years as the first GM of the NSWRL, Quayle was a superb administrator and communicator, having been on the other side of the fence as a player with Easts and Parramatta beforehand.
Quayle should have been made chairman of the ARLC instead of Grant.
And David Gallop would rightfully still be there. The perfect combination.
O’Neill isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but he is mine. He can be bristly, but what he’s achieved for rugby and football over the last 16 years has been enormous.
He saw in professional rugby in 1996, winning the RWC in 1999, beating the British and Irish Lions in 2001 in a series for the only time, heading the hugely successful 2003 Rugby World Cup in Australia, seeing in the revolutionary A-League, overseeing the Socceroos move into Asia, and qualifying for the 2006 FIFA World Cup for the first time since 1974.
All major achievements, that netted both organisations multi-millions of dollars profit.
I’ve saved D’Arcy and Monk until last because I didn’t want to waste Roar space, and all they have achieved is not knowing right from wrong, nor how to behave as elite Australian sportsmen. Both are dickheads, and a waste of space themselves.
Just six words for the Australian Olympic Committee and Swimming Australia.
Get rid of them both forever.