WHILE rugby league fans ponder the terrible year the code has endured, moves are afoot at the highest echelons to fix the Australian Rugby League Commission.

Friday’s appointment of former AFL commissioner, Graeme Samuel, has sent a loud message to the rugby league community that, after two years of inaction, the NRLC is bolstering its stocks and coming to grips with getting its house in order.

Samuel may not have league streaming through his veins but he understands what a sports commission needs to do. He will walk into a rabble that urgently needs to earn the respect of the league world after several years of paralysis, infighting and glad handing.

Perhaps Samuel may even be a replacement for controversial commission chairman, John Grant who has failed miserably to deliver after being touted as the messiah two years ago.

With the exception of the only woman on the NRLC, Cathy Harris, who has taken it upon herself to mentor chief executive Dave Smith and to make a genuine contribution to the game, the rest of this lot seem to have very little idea of the culture that makes the game tick.

Smith continues to make genuine, if flawed, attempts to right the many wrongs in league (often failing but at least trying), the commission have shored up their positions with a watertight constitution that does not allow for any level of accountability.

We are stuck with each of them for a minimum of two years and with Grant himself for at least four.

Broke clubs, an inability to engage fans and a push for members were all on the commission’s agenda when they were sworn in two years ago.

Gary Pemberton, a bloke with decades of experience as a corporate heavy, has already resigned. He and Harris were the only ones who actually appeared to understand the brief.

That included asking questions of head office without trying to do their jobs, building a culture of corporate governance and offering the game genuine knowledge in commercial, legal, marketing and operational issues.

Grant managed to snag the gig because the almighty league power base of Queensland offered him up as their perfect candidate. They said he came with a huge knowledge of league, its culture and its nuances.

While Grant did play the game at the highest level, he did not have much at all to do with it when he retired.

His shabby sacking of David Gallop, and the ensuing controversy, underlined his lack of understanding of the real issues engulfing the game.

His fellow commissioners have very little league DNA between them. They may have been handed the keys to the city when they landed a billion-dollar television contract but they have limited ideas on how to use it.

Harris gets Sydney. She has run fruit and vegetable businesses in the city for most of her life and understands only too well how different league can be in this, the league centre of the universe.

Pemberton, too, understood that this is a working-class game trying to become a genuine national force. He was the “black hat” of the commission, unwilling to go along for the ride just because Grant told them to.

League threw the baby out with the bath water when everyone from the existing boards was sacked because of perceived News or ARL bias.

In ridding itself of so many directors with genuine passion and commitment, the talent pool was now what it should have been.

Insiders say the ARLC is fast becoming a joke, paralysed by a lack of leadership yet obsessed with the gladhanding and corporate box side of the job. Grant’s meddling with head office has not gone unnoticed and irked many of his fellow commissioners.

This has been an annus horribilis for the NRL. A new CEO with no league background has been called upon to administer a game supported by a commission with questionable expertise in the game.

The result is the shambolic events of last weekend — appalling operational stuff-ups that come with an inexperienced head office. A level of statesmanship and genuine passion for the sport must exist on these commissions if they are to be effective.

The AFL commission has both by the bucketload.

The ARLC, by comparison, is simply not up to it.