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Dave Smith will leave rugby league next month. I won’t miss him, I won’t feel sorry for him, and I won’t feel like he’s been hard done by in his past three years.
Rugby league is a brutal game on the field and is no less brutal off it. Take any club in the NRL and you will find cases of staff – and everyone is ‘staff’ in one way or another – who were dismissed, contracts not renewed, marginalised or shut out of the game.
Players, coaching and administration staff, club officials can all count themselves part of the hard-luck crew.
Because that is the game, and it’s been that way since 1895.
Smith did his job for the time he was there. His achievements are too numerous to mention and I would be repeating what other commentators have outlined.
However, rugby league fans should note two points in particular: digital media, and women in league.
I believe these will be Smith’s greatest legacies.
The second point will be the most quickly acknowledged.
Prior to Dave Smith taking over rugby league in Australia, you could count one one hand the women in senior positions in the game.
We now have a Women’s Player of the Year for the first time in 2015, the Jillaroos are actually being paid to play representative games and participation from women and girls playing the game is up 26 per cent.
In addition, whenever the NRL had to step in to provide funding to clubs such as the Wests Tigers and Gold Coast Titans, Smith ensured women were represented on those boards.
The game doesn’t know it yet, but actively encouraging women’s involvement in every area of the sport will yield future dividends not possible with their exclusion from the ‘Boys’ Club’ of decades past.
The second point to address is the media rights – the broadcasting deal that has already been struck with Channel Nine, and the soon-to-be-negotiated pay TV rights.
Wrongly, Dave Smith has been ridiculed for excluding News Limited, owner of Fox Sports Australia, in negotiating the television rights.
What he has already achieved is securing four games a week, across the same number of nights, on free-to-air television. The broadest possible reach was sought, allowing the most number of rugby league fans in Australia to see the games.
This leaves the question of Foxtel and the shut-out of their highly prized and successful Super Saturday content, where they were able to screen three games in succession on most weekends.
Soon the Nine Network will have a plum Saturday night NRL game in their schedule while News Limited owner Rupert Murdoch will have to pour himself a cup of hot chocolate and tune in to the Aussie rules.
Yet focusing on Foxtel is missing the real point of Smith’s broadcast strategy.
My view is that Fox will get a seat at the negotiating table and will need to come up with a zillion dollars to get even the smallest piece of the rugby league pie.
The NRL has recognised that pay TV – or ‘subscription television’ – is an old model. It had its heyday a decade ago when the only apple I held in my hand was a golden delicious.
The days of paying for a subscription to a suite of channels, most of which the average subscriber hardly flicks to, just so that they can get their Saturday rugby league, are over.
The NRL are in a position to offer its product to everyone who wants to see it for a far more modest fee than Fox charges, with much greater value for the footy fans.
In March this year, free-to-air television was available in every household, the internet in 80 per cent of homes, and pay TV in only 27.2 per cent.
This last figure is overshadowed by smartphones (73%), tablets (47%), games consoles (43%) and smart TVs (30%).
Those numbers of penetration into Australian homes are only growing. Pay television is being left behind while all other digital screens are dwarfing it.
I didn’t understand the versatility of the smart TV until I got one myself. I can use the remote control to source everything on the internet from Peppa Pig to Ingmar Bergman’s classic The Seventh Seal. Once I can get live NRL games, I will want for nothing.
Streaming through whatever device you’ve got is the future of broadcasting. The NRL knows it and last year devoted four pages of its annual report to digital initiatives.
The current NRL paid digital pass is at present not available through a smart TV because of the contract with Telstra. As soon as the NRL has more authority to wrestle free of these sorts of constraints, the better.
So who will see the digital revolution through to its end? It won’t be Smith, who is out the door, but in the interim will be replaced by John Grant.
Does that name sound familiar? It should, because he’s the current Australian Rugby League chairman. He’ll also be the interim CEO, having accepted additional duties thrust upon him by the Commission’s nominations committee.
What did you say? Members of the same board he chairs recommended he take up additional responsibility? It seems that’s exactly what has happened.
So where does that leave the governance of the ARL Commission? You tell me, because I can’t find the Constitution anywhere despite searching for it and asking some league journos to help out.
It’s certainly mentioned in the code of conduct on the Play Rugby League website but this is as much as can be found on the NRL websites.
I know you’re going to draw historical comparisons with this. Julius Caesar had emergency powers conferred on him by the Roman Senate and became dictator in 48 BC, Adolf Hitler was given the same by the German Reichstag in 1933, and Emperor Palpatine gleefully accepted more power in a galaxy far, far away. It all worked out fine for the people those guys ruled, you’re telling me?
You’d be drawing a longer bow than the Battle of Agincourt to suggest anything like that.
Except, as much as I want to refute your claims, I can’t find the Constitution to smack you down.
Maybe one day we’ll find it at the bottom of one of Smith’s archive boxes at Grace Storage.
Either way, we’re into a new era for the NRL.
***
There was one other resignation at the NRL last week that will resonate with me long after Smith heads back down a Welsh coal mine.
Don Stuart, the NRL referees’ operations manager has resigned after 18 years with the organisation. He was there when I came to first grade as a touch judge, and he was there when I left.
Donny was responsible for keeping everything running in the referees office – the logistics of officials at eight first grade games a week, clothing, equipment, booking training venues, referees trainers, petty cash, milk in the fridge, liaison with HR at the NRL – you wouldn’t believe the things he had to organise and was left to blame when circumstances changed.
Anyone on the outside would not understand his responsibilities or how busy he was. Yet Donny would simply smile and get on with the job.
The guy is a professional person and offered me tremendous support in all aspects of my life as a first grade match official. He is owed a debt by the game and although few people in rugby league will understand the role he played, the people who worked with Donny admire him.
Donny and his American wife Lori will move to the USA. I wish them both the very best and a new life away from the stress of being part of the NRL referees.
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