Rugby Australia appoints interim CEO Rob Clarke

Former ARU chief operations officer Rob Clarke has been named as the interim chief executive after another day of turbulence.

Rob Clarke will take over from Raelene Castle as interim Rugby Australia CEO

Former Australian Rugby Union chief operations officer Rob Clarke has been named as the interim chief executive of Rugby Australia, following a day of turbulence which saw the likely chairman Peter Wiggs resign from the board.

RA interim chairman Paul McLean confirmed to The Australian this afternoon that Clarke, who surprisingly departed the ARU in 2017 as the turmoil surrounding the axing of the Western Force was at its most intense, would take over the interim CEO’s role almost immediately.

The RA board recognised that whoever filled the role would need to be familiar with the business and effectively able to pick up the reins immediately and there is no question that Clarke fills that bill.

It is unclear at this stage whether Clarke will take the role as a caretaker only or whether he hopes to be considered for the permanent position.

Some 36 hours earlier, it seemed near-certain that Matt Carroll, the CEO of the Australian Olympic Committee, was to be parachuted into the role as a permanent replacement for Raelene Castle who stood down last month.

Even when Wiggs angered his fellow board members by demanding that he would take on the job of RA chairman on condition that Carroll was appointed to run the business on a daily basis, it seemed that Carroll’s rugby credentials still made him a credible candidate.

McLean suggested in an email revealed by The Australian that Wiggs might step back from the chairman’s position and allow the role to fall to be filled by incoming director Hamish McLennan, a former News Corp executive and Ten boss, he still suggested that McLennan meet with Carroll as soon as possible.

That left McLean slightly exposed with some of his fellow directors – John Wilson, Pip Marlow, Hayden Rorke and Daniel Herbert in particular – who had argued that due process needed to be followed.

Wilson had argued that “we will all look like the idiots people think we are” if we directly appoint a candidate without taking the advice of the global headhunters RA had employed to conduct the search for a chief executive.

But then the emails were leaked to The Australian, embarrassing McLean. Thereafter, there was no more talk of persuading Wiggs to reconsider his resignation as a director and returning to the board. And Carroll’s name, too, began to fall out of the loop.

He could still apply for the permanent position but clearly the winds have swung seriously against him.

Carroll still has his highly-influential job at the AOC, although he may need to do some bridge-building with the Olympic movement after telling his boss, John Coates, that where his great sporting love was the Olympics, his was rugby.

McLean made the announcement of Clarke’s appointment to the RA staff at around 4pm.