BY TREVOR BAXTER
“DON’T forget that Peter V’landys profile; illustrator Mark is dolling him up like Santa Claus,” was the office missive.
Well, you are supposed to be of a certain age to still believe in Father Christmas. And those Trojans still haven’t forgotten about Greeks bearing gifts.
But this 63-year-old son of a hard-working family from Greece who put down roots in New South Wales – Wollongong to be precise – certainly isn’t an old man with a bushy white beard.
- Latham’s Loft: The ritual of buying a programme
- RSW on TV: Behind The Whistle and Scottish codebreakers
- Subscribe to Rugbyleaguehub.com on YouTube
He is, though, the chairman of the Australian Rugby League Commission and seen by plenty as potential saviour of Super League and the wider sport in the Northern Hemisphere.
Under his stewardship, the NRL continues to build record revenue and healthy profits.
In comparison, Super League may still possess urine, but the collecting receptacle is getting further out of range.
That’s why V’landys (or Vlandis, to give him his birth name) is seen as the Messiah, Santa Claus or – as Brian Carney called him on the eve of this year’s Las Vegas adventure – the PT Barnum of rugby league.
Now here’s me thinking the greatest showman was Derek Beaumont. And didn’t old Phineas Taylor have a propensity to hoodwink his audiences?
But V’landys and Beaumont do appear to be cut from the same cloth. In a chat with Carney on Sky Sports the former described his views on leadership.
“Leadership to me means you have to take risks,” he said while describing the British game as ‘insular.’
“Back yourself, the minute you start listening to the white noise you achieve nothing. If you think you are doing the right thing never be scared.”
It’s a mantra that’s served V’landys well since graduating from Wollongong University with a Bachelor of Commerce degree and in 1988 becoming chief executive of the NSW Harness Racing Club.
He did play league as a kid – for Wests Illawarra – but it seems his talents lay with academia rather than physical prowess.
Later becoming chief executive of Racing New South Wales, he and the sport were faced with a crisis when racing was stopped due to an equine flu epidemic.
However, he successfully lobbied for vital two-tier government funding to save jobs and protect the sport.
V’landys became a Member of the Order of Australia for services to racing in 2014. Three years later, he was a key component in launching the world’s richest horse race – the Everest – held in Sydney, intended to rival the Melbourne Cup at Flemington.
You don’t, though, become so well known and powerful – he has been known to hobnob with monarchs and presidents – without attracting scrutiny.
A high-profile investigation by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation into the treatment of retired racehorses led to a defamation case by V’landys against the broadcaster and a journalist.
He lost that and a subsequent appeal but was said to have been treated shabbily with how the evidence was presented.
Any fall-out reputational damage hasn’t halted his rise. Last year he was named eighth on Australian Financial Review’s top 10 most culturally powerful people in the country. Artist Vincent Namatjira came out first!
He is definitely higher up any ladder when it comes to Australia’s leading sports administrators, nicknamed the ‘Can Do’ man – which is why the Betfred Super League is so desperate for NRL investment of money and ideas currently.
Or is it? There has been plenty of talk for almost 12 months – including during England’s recent Ashes series defeat – about any future collaboration and what it would look like.
V’landys has insisted that the NRL need to be asked. “We are not going to force ourselves on them otherwise it wouldn’t work,” he has stressed.
So, more bah humbug than ho, ho, ho? It’s maybe now or never for Father Christmas with an Aussie brogue.