The ARL Commission has embarked on a frantic three-month plan to get former banking executive David Smith “rugby league ready” for when he takes charge as NRL CEO, The Roar can reveal.
Smith is currently the CEO of Lloyd’s Bank Australia and will finish his post there on February 1 to take on the NRL top job.
Previously, he was a director of Bank of Scotland Treasury and a member of the UK Treasury Executive Committee.
He has an engineering background and began his career in London with Morgan Grenfell and Co in 1987; Smith later held a number of senior management positions at Deutsche Bank, UBS and HBOS.
It is believed that Smith has absolutely no rugby league background – although it has been pointed out that he spent some time playing rugby union in Wales.
He replaces former NRL CEO David Gallop, now the CEO of Football Federation Australia, who was a die-hard Canberra Raiders supporter while growing up in the nation’s capital, according to his Wikipedia entry.
ARLC chairman John Grant told The Roar that it was a race against time to get Smith to shed his corporate banking image and appeal to the rough bogans in Australia’s heartland.
“This bloke will have been used to long lunches and Qantas Lounge check-ins, rubbing shoulders with Harvard-educated suits and staying at luxurous four-star hotels on the company dime,” Grant said.
“But now he’s going to have to appeal to the toothless South Sydney supporter who doesn’t give a f*** about how many synergies he’s been able to leverage during his corporate career. It’s a big jump to make.”
The Roar understands that the three-month plan will involve a series of practical workshops in which Smith is introduced to and forced to make pleasantries with rugby league fans and players – both past and present.
The Welshman will also have to sit a series of pop quizzes on the history of rugby league, with questions ranging from “who won the 1976 grand final?” to “how many people were in that hotel room the night of insert atrocity>”
Also as part of the plan, Smith will also be asked to ghost-write a new Wikipedia page for himself, describing his love for the game in his formative years – and remain vigilant in updating his Wiki in the years going forward and removing all the falsehoods that will inevitably be put up there by bored, semi-literate online trolls.
Smith will also undergo a form of language retraining to assist him in the smooth transition from business executive to NRL executive. A team of speech therapists will iron out his proclivity to use business terminology such as ‘EBITDA’, ‘NPAT’, ‘Key Performance Indicators’, ‘synergies’ (leveraged) and ‘bearish global macro outlook ‘ – and replace these with key phrases like ‘the game has never been stronger’.
“We’re confident that Dave will be able to achieve all these goals over the next three months as we look to shape him into a formidable sports administrator. And by that I mean turn him into a total puppet for the Commission, which is incidentally also part of the three-month plan,” Grant added.
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