Robbed at gunpoint while a bankteller, Graham Annesley knows what pressure is
The most experienced administrator within the halls of League Central will face league’s weekly firing squad of supporters, coaches, CEO’s and media but Graham Annesley is made for the job.
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Graham Annesley was given two guns.
A Browning automatic shotgun and a Smith and Wesson revolver.
In the mid-1970s, a time of flares, hippies and big hair, bank teller’s were armed.
Annesley’s schooling to become a bank teller including morning counter training inside the Rural Bank of NSW in Sydney’s west, before heading to the Reserve Bank pistol range in Martin Place for mandatory target practice in the afternoon.
An 18-year-old Annesley, didn’t last long.
“I left banking because one, it wasn’t for me, but secondly because I got held-up twice by the same bloke in the space of nine months,’’ he told The Sunday Telegraph.
“I’ll never forget it.
“He came in with this little pork pie hat on, sunglasses and a piece of sticky plaster over his nose, in an obvious attempt to disguise himself.
“He was dressed in business wear and had a briefcase.
“He put the briefcase up on the counter, which I didn’t think was too unusual.
“And he put his hand in (the briefcase), which I thought would be to get his deposit out.
“But then he pushes this note across, all the while keeping his hand in the briefcase and he says “give me $6,000 and no one will get hurt.’
“It was like a movie.
“He kept his hand in the bag to indicate he had a gun in the briefcase.
“I never saw it, he never pulled it out.
“But I shoved some money across the counter and he picked it up and shoved it in his bag and walked out.
“Nine months later, I look up, here he is again.
“Same look, puts the note across the counter and he asks for more money this second time, but I actually gave him less.
“After my two armed hold-ups, I thought this is probably not for me.’’
The irony of Annesley’s story is perfectly rugby league.
If the NRL were ever looking for someone to take a bullet for the team, they need look no further than the their head of football, ‘Cool Hand’ Annesley.
Over the next seven months of the NRL season - the most experienced administrator within the halls of League Central, including CEO Todd Greenberg - will face league’s weekly firing squad of supporters, coaches, CEO’s and the press.
His mandate is to oversee anything related to football; the referees, the video bunker, the play-the-ball, interchange, concussion, send-offs, sin-bins, too many replays, not enough replays, scrums, forward passes, irate coaches, the list goes on and on.
He can’t win.
Yet for this former referee, who officiated over 240 first grade games and internationals, it’s familiar territory.
“You can’t satisfy everybody,’’ Annesley said.
“I don’t come into this job thinking I’m going to be any less criticised that anyone else that might do the job.
“But I made it clear when I talked to Todd (before taking the job) that I thought we needed to be more transparent and we needed to get on the front foot more.
“So one of the things I talked to Todd about, which he was very happy to endorse, is that we’re going to conduct a Monday afternoon media briefing where we’ll discuss anything that has happened on the field over the weekend.
“We’ll talk about decisions, in some cases we’ll put our hand up and say we were wrong, in other cases we might defend things that have happened over the course of the weekend.
“If people disagree, well they’re entitled to tear that pieces.
“But I’ll always be as up front and honest as I can.’’
On the hill at Cumberland Oval as a 12-year-old, watching his older brother Neil play SG Ball for Parramatta, is how rugby league found Annesley.
“I had a genuine interest in the game, but never really the yearning to play,’’ Annesley said.
What he did have an appetite for was, pocket-money.
“I was still at school when I quickly learned you could get paid for refereeing junior league games,’’ he said.
“It was a pittance really, but over the course of a season at the end of the year you’d get a cheque for $500, which was pretty big money when you’re still at school.
“I started refereeing in the Parramatta junior league under-7’s when I was 12.
“I got graded with the NSWRL when I was 18 and refereed my first, first-grade game when I was 25.
“That was the Dragons and the Raiders at Kogarah Oval.’’
His rapport with the players, confidence to back himself and unflappable willingness to make a call quickly earned him respect as one of the game’s leading whistleblowers.
In front of 57,000 at Wembley Stadium in 1994, Annesley famously sent Great Britain captain Shaun Edwards off “for one of the best coathangers you’ve ever seen” on Bradley Clyde.
He also officiated the very first State of Origin match at the MCG in front of 87,000.
He blew his final whistle in 1997.
Annesley then spent a decade after the Super League war, moving for the first time into sporting administration, as the NRL’s chief operating officer.
He then took a dramatic and unexpected move into politics.
“It was through the game that I got involved in politics,’’ Annesley said.
“I got reasonably friendly with John Brogden, the leader of the opposition in NSW at the time and often we’d be at the same events and we’d discuss politics.
“The next thing I was the candidate for Miranda.
“I ran in 2007 and I needed a swing of 9.1 per cent and I missed out by a couple of hundred votes.
“I continued in my job at the NRL for another four years and was convinced to give politics another crack in 2011.
“I was elected as the member for Miranda in 2011 and a week after being elected I got a phone call from (former premier) Barry O’Farrell asking me to get sworn in the next day as the NSW Sports Minister.
Annesley repeated to The Sunday Telegraph, what he had inferred in his resignation speech from politics in 2013, to takeover as CEO of the Gold Coast Titans.
“I never regarded myself as a politician, I always felt I was a sports administrator and there were lots of aspects of politics I found unsavoury,’’ he said.
The Titans were on their knees when Annesley arrived on the Gold Coast - the club wallowing in $25 million debt.
“I had a very difficult first few years at the Titans with a club that was effectively insolvent and had to be re-born and re-established to the point now it has a very bright future,’’ Annesley said.
“The offer from Todd to come back here (NRL) was unplanned.
“I had to think long and hard about it.
“But the opportunity to contribute across the broader game rather than just one club and the feeling that I still had something to contribute, I felt warranted accepting the job.’’
Undoubtedly, Annesley’s greatest asset is his experience. There’s not much in the game he hasn’t witnessed or experienced.
And with that, he already knows what’s coming each Monday and knows better than most, the spotlight that will be on his referees.
“There’ll be errors from time to time, there’ll be controversial decisions, but controversy doesn’t always mean wrong,’’ Annesley said.
“There’s a lot of tight decisions in this game which divide opinion.
“The one thing I’m not going to be is the referees coach.
“I’m not going to be out there every week, giving them instructions to within an inch of their lives about what should happen.
“My job is to ensure the policy and operational directives of the administration of the game are carried out.
“And then, other people have to be accountable for how they carry them out, just as I’m going to be held accountable for what the end product looks like.’’
Originally published as Robbed at gunpoint while a bankteller, Graham Annesley knows what pressure is
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