January 9, 2020: Neil Whittaker is interviewed
I meet one of the NRL's two main architects in a central Sydney skyscraper.
During the last off-season (not the Covid-enforced one) I was continuing to file for League Weekly, which since Covid is in dire jeopardy of being shut down completely.
On one hand, it was helpful to be doing these book interviews regularly because it meant I didn’t have to cast around too hard for a ‘Mascord Meets…’ each week.
But on the other, I had to be careful not to put anything much in the story that detracted from the impact of the book.
Neil Whittaker said he hadn’t done a rugby league interview in 20 years.
What follows is my account of our meeting - minus the juicer stuff which, of course, is reserved for the book.
MASCORD MEETS …. NEIL WHITTAKER (Former NRL CEO)
League Weekly, January 13 2020
By STEVE MASCORD
Neil Whittaker, the main who oversaw the end of the Super League War Down Under, says he hasn’t done an interview about rugby league in 20 years.
He agrees to meet me for my upcoming book (working title: Two Tribes) in the foyer of Sydney office tower at 1 O’Connell Street. He’s wearing jeans, boots and an open necked business shirt. I had a similar outfit planned (it’s the day before Casual Friday) but my business shirt fell out of my bag the previous day so I’ve got a KISS t-shirt on.
No, not ONLY a KISS t-shirt… pants and other stuff as well.
Soon we’re in a lift and heading skywards. Neil works for a business consultancy that is headquartered here and the board room he has reserved for us has a sprawling view of the Sydney skyline with the harbour bridge off the right. He fetches a jug of water, the small talk is over and it’s down to business.
As I’m sure you’ll appreciate, most of the “business” cannot be reported here as it’s for an upcoming book about the 1997 season. But I did ask Neil a couple of things especially for League Weekly readers.
Firstly, a recap of exactly who Neil Whittaker is. And a hooker, he played 56 games for Balmain between 1979 and 1985. He was club captain for two of those years. When John Quayle quit as chief executive of the Australian Rugby League in early ’97, before dual competitions kicked off, he was recruited from his job in the industrial sector as Quayle’s replacement.
It was Whittaker who commenced peace talks with News Corporation head of sport Ian Frykberg, coming up with the framework for a “National Rugby League”, and Whittaker who stayed on as CEO for that body. He left at the end of 1999, having overseen the dramatic culling of teams such as South Sydney, who subsequently fought their way back into the competition.
Today he has an air of someone who has mulled over those years intensely during the period since and who is ready to talk. South Sydney might seem a juicy topic but because they played in 1997 and were part of the first NRL competition the following year, they are somewhat outside my remit.
What I do discuss with Neil is his relationship with the RFL, with Maurice Lindsay and how the ARL re-assumed a relationship with the International Federation (then called the ‘World Board’) after a year of isolation.
“We had one or two meetings where everybody wanted … we thought it was important to keep that (international rugby league) going,” he say towards the end of an hour-long chat.
“Super League clearly had control over in England. They’d swapped to summer. The whole international game was difficult.
“We decided that we would run rules that suited us. They could take it if they wanted to. I couldn’t wait around for them to get their heads around it.
“So we put the rules together. We sat down and talked about … what we haven’t talked about is that there were two sets or rules.
“(Long serving official) Tommy Bellew said to me ‘you need another six months before you can play a game of football’. He said that to me in early January. I said ‘well Tom, we’re playing our first game on the first of March’.
“Anyway, we couldn’t wait around for a group that had gone to Super League, didn’t know where they were … we didn’t have time to spend with them so we just decided to continue on and go with what we had with our game and we’d patch the international stuff up later.”
Super League rules included the scoring team kicking off to restart play, scrums 20 metres in from touch and the ‘zero tackle’ rule that applies after a turnover. Super League also introduced the video referee, which was subsequently adopted by the NRL.
Super League had planned a World Cup in 1998. But when the game in Australia came together under Whittaker, the focus was very much on buying back the farm - the farm being heartland supporters in NSW and Queensland.
International competition took a back seat, as did expansion and the World Club Challenge, which was not seen again until after the turn of the century.
Australia fielded its first united team in four years on April 24 1998 and fell to a shock loss, 22-18, to the Kiwis at North Harbour Stadium. It was a harbinger of the future, with New Zealand going on to end the green-and-golds’ decades-long dominance in all series and then win the World Cup.
The Kiwis toured Britain in 1998 and won the series; the Super League grand final also came into being with Wigan winning. It was the first time since 1973 the champions had been determined by a final.
While Whittaker has eschewed sports journalists for two decades, he does speak about his experiences on the speaking circuit.
An agency for speakers says on its website: “Before resigning as CEO, Neil successfully rationalised the number of teams for the 2000 competition from 22 to 14. Commonly regarded as an impossible task in such a high profile, traditional and emotional sport, it was achieved through a difficult but fair process. It was a process that required vision and courage for the sake of the longer-term best result for the "game" as a whole.
“Prior to his executive career in rugby league administration, Neil served in engineering and senior management roles in several major companies, including Woolworths Limited and CSR Limited. His responsibilities have spanned operations, marketing, sales and business management.
“Neil has now set up his own consultancy where he and his partner offer hands-on strategic advice to a range of businesses. Now a much-sought-after speaker, Neil shares his experiences with change management in a corporate environment and gives some key insights into how fundamental business principles were applied to the emotion-charged world of rugby league.”
Whittaker says during our time together that fans seem to forget that 1997 actually happened - but in fact it was a period that redefined the game in Australia and set it on the road to its current abundant prosperity.
I’m not here to advertise Neil’s services but could the game in England do with someone of his expertise and experience?
Neil Whittaker was a typical Balmain Tiger - a total piece of shit
Amazing it’s been so long. David Gallop still gets dragged into issues almost 10 years on.