Maurice Lindsay
Colourful rugby league executive who led Wigan to glory and transformed the sport in Britain
MAURICE LINDSAY, who has died aged 81, was arguably the most influential figure in the 127-year history of the Rugby Football League; his vision and dynamism made Wigan the most successful club in the world, and he went on to transform the sport as chief executive of its governing body.
Colourful, self-confident and often controversial, Lindsay spearheaded the switch from a traditional winter game to the summer. A talented deal-maker, he negotiated an inaugural £87 million five-year agreement with Sky that led to the formation of Super League in 1996.
Soon after taking over at the Rugby Football League (RFL), Lindsay remarked: “I knew it was a massive challenge but it needed to be grabbed by the scruff of the neck. Otherwise we were in danger of being a small parochial sport forever – and the danger is that you can finish up with no game at all.”
Maurice Lindsay was born at Horwich, near Bolton, on May 8 1941, and was educated at Thornleigh College. As well as working as a bookmaker, he had built up a planthire business by the time he joined the Wigan board in 1980.
Lindsay had developed his passion for the sport as a schoolboy when legendary figures such as Billy Boston and Eric Ashton shone for Wigan. But the club had fallen on hard times, relegated for the first time in their history, when Lindsay took charge along with three other local businessmen, Jack Robinson, Tom Rathbone and Jack Hilton – the “Gang of Four”, as they were known.
Wigan soon began to prosper, with Lindsay, a shrewd publicist, acclaiming the signing of a 16-year-old schoolboy international live on breakfast television. Shaun Edwards went on to become the most decorated player in rugby league history and is now defence coach for the France rugby union team.
Wigan made their first Challenge Cup final appearance in 14 years in 1984, and although they lost to Widnes, they returned to Wembley a year later to beat Hull in a classic final which proved to be the catalyst for their future dominance.
But there were controversies along the way; Alex Murphy, widely regarded as the sport’s greatest ever player, was recruited as coach then sacked for allegedly throwing a telephone at Lindsay during a row.
Lindsay’s acumen and extravagant spending attracted the best players to Wigan, who became the first full-time professional club and ruled the domestic game. Rivals could not match a side packed full of star names like Ellery Hanley, Andy Gregory, Jason Robinson and Joe Lydon, and the leading overseas coaches Graham Lowe and John Monie.
Wigan paid a world-record £440,000 to tempt Martin Offiah from their rivals Widnes, and between 1988 and 1995 they won a record eight successive Challenge Cup finals as well numerous other trophies. Their triumphs included the inaugural World Club Challenge against the Australian side Manly in 1987 in front of a capacity 37,000-strong crowd at their old Central Park ground.
Lindsay became team manager of the Great Britain squad which toured New Zealand in 1990 and Australia in 1992. That year he was elected president of the Rugby Football League, and briefly left Wigan to become the RFL’S chief executive, succeeding the popular David Oxley who had retired.
“There was an immediate change of mood,” recalled one former employee. “It was like going from a holiday camp to a concentration camp in a couple of weeks.”
Lindsay was forced to defend himself after claims that his expenses were too high, that he was staying in luxury hotels and running a fancy car paid for by the RFL. Never short of a comeback, he retorted: “You surely can’t expect the chief executive of the sport to go to work on the No 57 bus.”
Lindsay was the target of heavy criticism in 1995 when he was in talks with Sky about creating a new streamlined competition involving deeply unpopular mergers for grand old clubs. It was suggested that Featherstone, Castleford and Wakefield should combine to form Calder; that the two Hull clubs, bitter rivals, should join forces; and that Salford and Oldham be rebranded as Manchester.
The public outcry was so great that merger plans never materialised, but the Super League went ahead anyway the following year, accompanied by the switch to summer rugby.
Lindsay, who became chairman of the International Board in 1996, left the RFL in 1998 to become chief
executive of Super League, but there was regular disharmony between the two governing bodies. He left Super League to return to cash-strapped Wigan when they moved from Central Park to the JJB Stadium, home of Wigan Athletic FC, whose owner Dave Whelan saved Wigan – by then called Wigan Warriors – from liquidation.
A salary cap had enabled rival clubs to catch up and end Wigan’s silverware monopoly but they did win the Challenge Cup again in 2002, and reached three Grand Finals between 2000 and 2003, though all were lost. Lindsay sacked five coaches as he sought to restore past glories and Wigan suffered the ignominy of slumping to bottom place in Super League in 2006.
The clamour for him to resign intensified, and he finally stepped down in 2007, citing ill health.
When Whelan had appointed Lindsay to the Wigan Athletic board in 2000 the move was opposed by many fans who remembered negative comments he had made about the club in the 1980s. But his football links were strong, and in 2008 he was elected to the FA Council. Two years later he briefly served as chairman of Preston North End FC.
Lindsay never lost his love for horses and greyhounds, and in 2009 became chairman of Racecourse Data Technologies, who had contracts to supply and support computerised betting systems for courses in the UK and Ireland.
But Lindsay’s lasting legacy will be as the man who transformed rugby league. Ralph Rimmer, the current RFL chief executive, said: “He was a unique character, always had a twinkle in his eye and Rugby League would not be where it is today without him.”
Maurice Lindsay did not marry.
Maurice Lindsay, born May 8 1941, died May 17 2022