BY JOHN DAVIDSON
The RFL remains without a chairperson with Nigel Wood unable to take on the role due to Sport England regulations.
The majority of Super League clubs forced chairman Simon Johnson and non-executive Sandy Lindsay out, with the pair resigning in March, with aim of installing Bradford Bulls part-owner Wood at the top to lead a review of the sport as part of a coup.
But the plotters have hit a snag as Wood cannot take the position as, under Sport England’s code for sports governance, no one who has been involved with a club for the previous 12 months can be chair.
Instead, rugbyleagyehub.com Long Reads understands, Wood has taken the title of senior executive director on an interim basis as he runs the review that is set to announce its findings in July.
The exits of both Johnson and Lindsay was followed by the resignations of Dr Cherrie Daley and Julia Newton, while director Rob Hicks also left the governing body in March.
With the RFL leadership decimated, on March 21 the organisation announced an interim board made up of executive members Rob Graham, Tony Sutton, and Wood. The non-Executive members of the board were James Child, Joanna Coates, Martin Coyd, Ian Roberts, and Emma Rosewarne.
However, Child lasted just a week on the interim board before he was forced to step down.
Child, a former Super League referee, told the Forty20 LIVE podcast: “I was asked to join the board on the basis that clearly the [previous] board had basically departed and they have to have a board as a governing body of a sport.
“I was elected to the board and a press release went out, but in probably less than a week I received a phone call from Tony Sutton [RFL chief executive] to basically say unless you plus one other resigns, the whole board will go under.
“The clubs will veto the whole board again and it will collapse like a pack of cards. The people who have gone on to the board are effectively those on the working party already, working with Nigel on the review of the sport, so there’s a logic to the people on there.
“My comment back to that, however, would be if there’s a working party that’s reviewing the sport to produce a supposed outcome, who is checking and challenging that process?
“The resolutions from the club basically said they wanted Simon to go, its created a vacuum where a new board had to be created. And they didn’t want new board appointments to be made until the outcome of the working party, not realising Nigel couldn’t be chair. Which was the assumption, and that shows, I think, naïveté.”
Child said rugby league gets a huge amount of funding from Sport England.
“And part of the requirements of all of that you have to have an independent board. So Nigel couldn’t be chair – they didn’t realise that.
“Then that meant an RFL member needed to be chair, which would have meant they would have lost control of that board.
“They then needed control of the board by putting their own people on the board, and there’s a limit to the number of people you can have on a board, which meant they had to lose two people that weren’t seen to be… controllable.
Along with Child, board member Roberts was also forced to step down.
Child said: “It feels like the game is in a mess, if I’m honest.
“In abeyance is probably a better way of putting it.”
It is believed Wood, with support of Hicks as an advisor, has been meeting Super League clubs recently as part of his review.
The RFL has been approached for comment.
