The choice of the new NRL chief executive David Smith doesn't add up, according to Paul Kent
New chief executive. Problems solved. Or so we thought.
Instead, concerns for the NRL's future and whether the ARL Commission is the wonder salve we all believed it would be only grow deeper after the arrival of new NRL boss David Smith on Friday.
It came with all the oomph of a teenage pillow fight.
It is still being investigated that immediately after being confirmed for the job the first phone call he made was to his wife and the first one he received was from Nick Politis, but welcome to rugby league, anyway, Dave.
Naturally, the Commission claimed it as a great victory and a win for the sport, something they are becoming well-practised in, of late, which is also beginning to come under suspicion.
Truth is, Smith is as anonymous as a police line-up.
And while he deserves time to show us what he is capable of, the big question will remain who is he and what has he done until he does something.
League fans have a right to view him with suspicion, as he will learn.
What is sure is that Smith's appointment has removed the administration one more step away from the game which, I believe, is a critical mistake.
There has never been a better week to show that rugby league needed a rugby league man to run the game. Too much of the administration is too far removed from the game, and this adds to it.
The overwhelming response from players against the NRL's ban on the shoulder charge has shown the considerable distance between the game being played, and those who play it, and the game being administered, and those who administer it.
Soon after Ben Teo's shoulder charge in April this year a campaign to ban the shoulder got a breath of life. It was a great newspaper story, and aside from the usual role call of doctors, few supported it.
At the time NRL football operations boss Nathan McGuirk dismissed the outcry.
Quite rightly, McGuirk pointed out that Teo's tackle was high, and that is what caused the damage, and that there was already clear cut rules for high tackles. It wasn't the shoulder charge that caused the injury at all, but a shoulder into a head.
Yet several more poorly aimed tackles, the ugly replays that followed, and suddenly the NRL was commissioning a study into shoulder charges and everybody knew where this was heading.
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All it needed was someone with suitable restraint, some football intelligence, and the focus would have been put back on high tackles and the need to eliminate them.
Instead, the NRL over-reacted and folded to public criticism. For all the criticisms of former NRL boss David Gallop as "reactionary", the new board has shown nothing has changed.
The clear spotlight on the NRL's wayward compass is that few in the game have seen the players galvanise so wholly over an issue, save for salary cap increases.
And the problem for the administration is an overwhelming majority of league fans are siding with the players. Now we're supposed to believe they know better? To trust them?
Unfortunately, there is very little pedigree within the Commission to demand the benefit of the doubt.
And so the hope was always that when the new chief executive was announced he would know enough about the game to provide a balance to the business focus of the Commission.
Smith's expertise is in banking. Not rugby league.
The NRL believed they nearly had their man when Gillon McLachlan, second in charge at the AFL, pushed them out to an offer of a $1.5 million annual salary some months back before pulling out at the last minute.
While it is a handsome sum for a sports administrator it is only table crumbs in the banking industry, strictly mid-management level money, and so the attraction of a banker has drawn private concerns from some.
If you can't make money in banking, good luck making it in rugby league.
How much this was considered by an ARL Commission struggling to find a suitable applicant, after the fiasco of McLachlan, is unknown.
None of it is Smith's fault, though, as he quite innocently walks into the maelstrom created by his board.
If nothing else we can tell him rugby league is already keenly familiar with bankers.
Not too many years back Wally Lewis was working the sideline for Channel 9 when Ray Warren crossed down to him.
"They're accusing me of being in the finance industry," Lewis said.
"They keep chanting 'Wally's a banker'."