Paul Malone says appointing Todd Greenberg to NRL executive role is at odds with having an idependent commission New NRL head of football Todd Greenberg. A CLUB chief executive is near the very top of administration of rugby league. Excuse me, is this 2013 or 1983? Todd Greenberg, CEO of Canterbury, has taken what the ARL commission describes in a media release is the "pivotal new role" as head of football, a brief which will include a strategic focus on all of rugby league operations in Australia. Greenberg is reported to be very good at his job. Just ask all those Sydney reporters who for a couple of years now have written paeans of praise about Greenberg's fearlessness as an administrator with the never-a-dull-moment Bulldogs, and his clarity of vision. Their disappointment was palpable when Greenberg took himself out of the running for the ARLC's chief executive job after all their pumping up of his tyres. They gave it instead to a Welshman with a business background, whom they will forever ridicule for not knowing Cam Smith. Rugby league took 14 long years to drag itself from the foundation season of the NRL to the point where enough people in clubland accepted that they needed to give up their share of power in the joint venture for the good of the game. Parachuting a club chief executive such as Greenberg, who has six seasons of running a member club, into such a senior, influential role in the running of the NRL sits distinctly at odds with the idea of an independent commission. In the early 1980s, Ken Arthurson went from being a vastly influential 20-year chief executive of Manly, to becoming chairman of the NSW Rugby League and the ARL. Arthurson was one of the toughest and shrewdest administrators of all. But every decision and policy, every judiciary decision and every representative team appointment and selection was likely to be seen as favouring Manly. It didn't matter how fair "Arko" was in his day-to-day running of the game, just as it won't matter how fair Greenberg is. The potential is there for residual friendliness to Canterbury to be construed. It's like being a little pregnant. You are either independent or you aren't.