By STEVE MASCORD
I’M NOT sure there is a better untold story in all of British rugby league: the former Canada World Sevens player who is now vice-president of the RFL, chairman of England touch and worldwide head of Dodgeball.
I’ll wait while you read that again. Uh-huh. Yeah. That’s right. No, I’m serious.
Meet 48-year-old Wiganer Mark Croston, a driving force at London Skolars who has quietly climbed to somewhere near the top of the game’s tree in this country while doing umpteen other things on the side … including running what some people would regard as “rival” sports.
Our story starts in the 1970s, in Ince, of all places.
“We played rugby from an early age, pretty much like Sydney – it was THE sport in Wigan,” Mark says down the line from … Wigan.
As a junior, Mark recalls “we didn’t really lose a game”.
“I then got involved in the Wigan system, the academy system, got up to reserve grade but was never really up to playing first grade for them.
“It was in the era of Shaun Edwards, Ellery Hanley, Gene Miles, Martin Offiah. Martin Dermott was in my position at hooker.
“They I went to university because I wanted to study.”
…where Croston captained Great Britain and England Students in a stint highlighted by the 1992 Student World Cup in Australia. He’d been there four years earlier with Wigan under 18s.
“I took up an offer to play in the Townsville comp, which I did for a year. While I was in Australia, the Brisbane Broncos bought the London Broncos and I got a call to go over there.
“It wasn’t because I was any good – you needed a certain number of English players. I played a couple of years at the Broncos …”
Then came his moment in the international sun – the Coca-Cola World Sevens in Sydney. In 1996, the Canadian side of which Croston was a part became the first side in the competition’s history to go the entire weekend without scoring a point.
“I’d never really wanted to play league in the north, it just never interested me….
“…then I went over the France, tried my hand at Villeneuve and at Avignon … played rugby union, didn’t really like it … became player coach at Skolars … helped get investment for them to become part of the new professional structure in 2003.
“I did play a couple of games that year but I was busy running the club as chief exec and head coach, trying to do everything. We paid players about 15 quid for a home game and 30 quid for an away game but the main thing is we were going to survive financially.
“Then I moved into the director of rugby role which I’ve been in ever since.”
OK, so how did Mark become the vice-president of the RFL (that’s not like American companies where there is a vice president in charge of everything from marketing to lavatories – that’s THE vice-president, folks)?
Mark laughs. “I think they asked who wanted to do it and I was the last one to step back.
“It goes down to the most experienced council member. Every year you get older – and supposedly wiser – and the honour is bestowed upon you.”
OK, now … boss of World Dodgeball? (it actually does pre-date the 2004 Ben Stiller movie – some say by hundreds of years. Mark works with Stiller on a number of projects and there is a World Cup coming up at Madison Square Garden)
“A young colleague of mine in the sports industry, I was helping give career advice and advice to. One day he came to me and said ‘I’ve been made a director of European Dodgeball.
“I said ‘you’ll be telling me you’re running world dodgeball next’. He said ‘here’s the thing, there isn’t (such an organisation) and I think the three existing continental bodies would like to have one’.
“I said ‘why don’t we set it up?’ and he said ‘well how do we do that?’ and I said ‘I haven’t got a clue’. That was in 2013.
“You can’t Google how to set up a world governing body so we just had to use our nous. We spoke to IOC members, all sorts of governing bodies, we just talked to people.”
In setting up a world governing body from scratch, Croston has a unique perspective on rugby league’s bid for recognition by the Global Association of International Sports Federations. I get the impression he things if the sport needed to align with rugby union in some countries in order to get government recognition and reach the necessary numbers, it should have at least considered doing so.
Dodgeball was recognised by GAISF before rugby league.
“I was surprised that rugby league got involved in an emotional battle over the situation,” he said.
“You really just have to do the work, tick the boxes. It seems to me there was too much emotion in this, too much focus on the other code of rugby’s focus on this rather than ‘it’s not really about them, it’s about us and what we’ve got and we’ve got this’.”
And now, having accepted an offer to be chairman of England Touch, Croston will be trying to help that sport gain recognition.
Here, he admits, there is a conflict. In Australia, rugby league includes Touch in its numbers. In England, league and union both want to include touch players but the sport wants to go its own way.
“One of the first things I did was write letters to the chairmen of rugby league and rugby union, the minister for sport and the chief executive for Sport England.
“…just to say ‘you may not like it, accept it or understand it but we are the recognised body for Touch in England and what I think is important is we all work together to get people playing any version of rugby’.
“Soccer dominates in this country. Together we can get more people playing a version of rugby.
“It’s a bit difficult for me because of my role with the RFL … but there’s another conflict there in that I can’t favour rugby league over rugby union in this scenario.”
OK, now the big one: Mark’s thoughts on the current unrest within the game (which one? Rugby league). He starts off by saying Nigel Wood did a very good job in bringing together warring parties during his term and that “maybe” the level of division from 10 or 15 years ago has returned.
“In the noughties we benefitted from a huge windfall from Sport England and the sport had more cash than it had ever had – through that and through broadcasting revenues,” he comments.
“That said, it’s sad that we’ve not got a lot to show for that now because it was just spent. It’s not really sustainable what came out of that from my perspective … particularly in London, which is a tragedy.
“There was a huge amount of money invested in the sport but I don’t think it was invested as wisely as it could have been.
“It’s easy to start focusing and turning in on conflict but I get excited by stepping back and looking at what it’s going to look like in five years, 10 years, rather than talking about who’s done what and who’s been given this and who’s controlling that.”
Asked to sum up the position of the sport in this country, Croston answers: “You’re a rock’n’roll man. What does Lou Reed say? If you throw battery acid down the drain, don’t go complaining when you can’t go swimming.”
