IN A LEAGUE OF HER
As CEO of Auckland Rugby League Rebecca Russell tells Kevin Norquay why she is intent on building the game and the communities around it.
Rebecca Russell was in her comfort zone as a strategist – quietly plotting plays like a rugby league standoff, letting those around her bash up the ball – when her CEO told her it was time to deliver more.
Her reaction?
‘‘Oh, waaaah,’’ she says, laughing aloud.
‘‘In those moments, you’re out of your comfort zone. You’re in the deep end. But you come back to those principles: you come back to knowing that you’ve got a role to play, the people around you, you’ve got a role to play if you trust that they can do it.’’
She moved into operations – making things work, instead of devising cunning plans and staying hands-off. It led her last year to Auckland Rugby League, a sport that is a family passion.
Russell had worked in strategy for almost a decade, at Datacom and Air New Zealand. A driven hard-worker, she found her home writing plans, even if she never saw herself as a strategist. Someone else did though, so there she was.
And then the bombshell.
‘‘I had a CEO who said to me, ‘right, you’ve done strategy for long enough. You need to put your money where your mouth is. You’ve written this beautiful strategy, now I want you to go and deliver it’,’’ she tells Sunday News.
Now, she can’t say enough about those who helped guide her career.
‘‘I’m incredibly grateful for those people, those mentors in my life,’’ she says.
From strategy she moved into working with an executive team, working close to the CEO, working with the board. It was invaluable, leading to starting to think long-term.
‘‘Future driven concepts and being able to articulate over 5-10 years, what we wanted to look like then, and bringing that back down into something that was cohesive and made sense,’’ she says.
‘‘That’s where I got a lot of quite critical skills. That has really helped me in my career more than anything else that I’ve done. You’ve set the vision and that’s what you’re chasing, that’s what you’re going after.
‘‘So, those moments in my career have really helped to develop me more holistically as a leader than if I just followed one kind of track. That has been incredibly useful.’’
Given her breadth of vision, it’s no surprise Russell looks at Auckland Rugby League as bigger than the queen city, bigger than football. It’s a family, a community, a powerful force for Mā ori and Pasifika.
Her ‘‘families’’ have names like Glenora Bears, Ellerslie Eagles, Mount Albert Lions, Point Chevalier Pirates, O¯ tara Scorpions, Te Atatu Roosters, Richmond Rovers and so aggressively on. Those fierce names reflect the burning community spirit within.
‘‘One of the reasons I was attracted to ARL and the role was we have 9500 players across the Auckland region, and we have incredible reach into the Mā ori and Pasifika communities,’’ she says.
‘‘When I look at the role that rugby league plays in people’s lives, the role that the local club plays, the role of the coach and all of those volunteers that come together to deliver that game, I think that is massively significant.
‘‘We’ve got more reach into our most vulnerable communities than maybe even the government does. So how does Auckland Rugby League take this incredible game and grow it, but also start looking at a stronger focus on social impact?
‘‘The end game is really to be the world’s leading rugby league region. That’s because we can deliver so much good through the game through identifying talent, having people participate and being active.
‘‘But it’s also knowing that actually, as a member of the community, your community, you have this local hub that you can go to for support, for friendship, for social services, for things that probably as a society we’ve kind of lost a little bit of focus on over time. We can bring some of that back.’’
In an interview that is meant to be about her, Russell winds up and gets excited about the bits that aren’t. To grow the game, she wants to get more tag football, more restricted weight grades, more women playing.
She even offers a big thank you to women from the arch rival sport – rugby’s world champion Black Ferns – for helping the cause of league.
‘‘We have 2000 women across Auckland playing rugby league. We’ve had phenomenal growth over the past two or three years. It just seems to have come from nowhere,’’ she says.
‘‘You just look at women’s sport all over, it has a massive profile. The Rugby
World Cup has done great things for rugby league and will do great things for women.
‘‘How do we create a thriving club model? Clubs in sport just in general, right across New Zealand at the grassroots level, are struggling. It’s harder to get volunteers.’’
Volunteers want to give back to the community, she says, but red tape is making that onerous.
‘‘We start putting things on to them like well, actually, we need to see your monthly accounts. We need to know you’ve got a health and safety plan.
‘‘You’ve got obligations and compliance, all of these things that we
‘We’ve got more reach into our most vulnerable communities than maybe even the government does. So how does Auckland Rugby League take this incredible game and grow it, but also start looking at a stronger focus on social impact? The end game is really to be the world’s leading rugby league region. That’s because we can deliver so much good through the game through identifying talent, having people participate and being active.’ REBECCA RUSSELL
kind of layer on top, and all of a sudden, it’s not fun any more. We need to take some of that back, and let our club people and volunteers do what they love, and do what they do best.
‘‘We’ve made it so hard, so hard. We need to talk more about these incredible people who do such great work in our community.’’
Change is coming, she says. At O¯ tara, the club has pulled back from bar revenues, something that has become a focus for several clubs.
‘‘Our O¯ tara club has developed a whole new complex out there, but they’ve put in a laundromat.
‘‘So they saw the opportunity to diversify the revenue by providing something that was a need for the local community.
‘‘There’s people who are thinking really differently, and that is the way that’s going to be our future in terms of how we progress.’’
And how about her though? What is core to her soul? Do you push yourself?
‘‘Way more than anyone could ever imagine, I am constantly dissatisfied with my performance. I’m pretty hard on myself, actually, and always have been,’’ she says.
‘‘I have a really clear purpose, and I’m quite purpose driven. One of the reasons I was attracted to ARL was because I can see that bigger impact that we could have.
‘‘So I love the game of rugby league. Absolutely love it. I can see so much development that we can do with the game, for the game. But actually, it’s all about the people and what I talk about is how we have got great humans connected to our rugby league community.’’
Her father played for Northcote Tigers, her husband for Glenora Bears. At Glenfield College Russell was a netball player (driven, of course). Even with her busy schedule, she still finds time to be a mother who coaches her daughter’s side.
Transitioning from chief executive to mum can be a tricky business. And she’s been placed on report and sinbinned when she’s got it wrong.
‘‘I’ve had one of those moments where I’ve spoken quite directly to my daughter, and she’s kind of looked at me like ‘I don’t work for you’,’’ she laughs.
‘‘There was definitely that transition from knowing when I walk in the door, OK, this is our family time. I’ve brought up kids throughout this. My husband’s an incredible support for me, and I don’t think I could have done it at this level without him.
‘‘I give just as much to my kids in everything that they do. I coached my daughter’s netball team this year, I don’t know how I fitted that in, but you just do. But yeah, it is definitely confronting.’’
Confronting, but so worth it. Her work enhances her personal life.
‘‘That is what gets me up in the morning. That’s what keeps me going, that if you can see more than just the bottom line, that is where you get that real richness of satisfaction with your career, satisfaction with your personal life, knowing that you’re not just doing a job, you’re doing something really meaningful.’’
That sounds like a big thanks to those who shunted her out of her comfort zone, into something so much better.