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Congratulations Todd, but why the hell did that take five months?

Todd Greenberg in happier times, not wrestling a bear. (AAP Image/Dean Lewins)
Expert
18th March, 2016
23

Almost five months to the day after Dave Smith announced he’d had enough of the greatest game of all, Todd Greenberg – effectively Smith’s No.2 – has been announced as the NRL’s new CEO.

Good on ya Todd. While you were only announced a few hours ago, and won’t even get your feet under your new desk until Monday, you’re the best man for the job.

But if the best man for the job has been working at League Central since 2013, why the hell did it take almost half a year to give him the gig?

During the press conference announcing Greenberg’s appointment, ARL Commission chairman John Grant said that Greenberg had applied for the CEO’s position after David Gallop resigned in 2012.

More:
» Greenberg announced as NRL CEO
» GORE: The first things that should be on the NRL CEO’s agenda
» MASCORD: Is John Grant serious about the War Chest

Grant said basically that they’d had their eye on Greenberg ever since. Then, to keep an even closer eye on him, they made him the NRL’s head of football in 2013.

So you’ve got a guy within the organisation who you not only know wants the top job, you actually think he’d be pretty good at it.

Did no one think that maybe it was time to take a leaf out of the AFL’s book and start grooming him to take over the top job?

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It was broadly reported after David Gallop stood down in 2012 that the NRL were doing their best to poach then-AFL 2IC Gillon McLachlan. However, Gil turned them down, because he had more or less been promised the top job at Australia’s biggest winter sport as soon as Andrew Demetriou stood down.

Having missed their man, the NRL got the Welsh banker in, and while he did a good job at balancing the books, it was apparent from his ‘Benji Barba’ gaffe very early on in the piece that Dave Smith was not going to have a ten-year tenure like his predecessor.

Yet with their CEO on borrowed time, the NRL still decided to keep his qualified, competent replacement as part of the ‘executive team’, rather than doing what the AFL did with McLachlan and making Greenberg Deputy CEO.

And sure, we can talk about how other people in footy were in the running to be CEO this time around, like former NRL COO Jim Doyle, but apparently it boiled down to being a two-horse race for the job between Greenberg and some bloke who runs a hotel chain.

In a nutshell, Greenberg has been the favourite to take over since last October. Yet rather than giving him the role as soon as Dave Smith walked out the door – which, had Greenberg been his deputy, would have been logical – John Grant and the Commission went on some ridiculous, expensive, worldwide search.

Surprise, surprise, they found gold in their own backyard – exactly where they knew it had been the whole time.

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