Reports today suggesting Big Nige left with a £500K golden hand shake.

Staggering amount given that he resigned as CEO. Also he's staying on in another capacity anyway.

Shouldn't get a penny. If it's in his contract then who agreed that? They should be shown the door immediately.

Was Nigel the RFLs marquee employee ?

Nigel Wood agrees RFL pay-off
League Express report that outgoing RFL chief executive Nigel Wood will take home £500,000 in compensation in a severance deal for losing his job. He’ll also act as a consultant to the RFL and was recently in New York to discuss their application to join the RFL structure.

He'll act as a consultant and no doubt get expenses and business class to New York on top of his £500k "compensation".

It’s a joke when ever people get a pay of for leaving their job I never and no should they

I want to know who signed this off and why they thought it was a good idea.

To then re-hire the bloke (won't be cheap) as a consultant is just throwing more money at one man. It's not even as if he's any good. That money could've gone a long way at grass roots rugby. To put it all in his ample pockets is obscene.

This

He probably did. He was answerable to nobody.

Hmm. I'm not sure that's right, even at the RFL.

When you think how much difference £500k would make to some grassroots community clubs it's really is a disgrace that he gets a sum like that as a "severance". That he thinks it's appropriate to accept it says plenty too.

This money should have been spent on headhunting someone to run the sport properly from top to bottom.

But then, there would be some left at the RFL who would be worried by this....

Utterly scandalous that this S.O.B. can take such a huge amount of money unchallenged, from a sport that already struggles to make cash

It's only 25,000 deep pan meat feast pizzas, you need to calm down!

I completely agree with you, in football you could (kind of) understand it (not me personally like). In our sport this is an absolute disgrace, and as you say how he has the temerity to take it is beyond me. We should pay him not a penny more ever from our coffers.

Hit the nail on the head here. Who sanctioned it? £500k is massively over the top for the role when compared to some 'real' CEO/MD jobs in the commercial world, I would liove to see expenses and pension details also

£500k severance on top of £314k annual salary. Add to that whatever he’ll be getting for his new consultancy role. That’s got to be over a million quid for one man in just over a year.

And no RL journo is taking the RFL to task over this.

Give them a change. This news has only just broke,

League Express gave it 13 lines before giving six paragraphs to the story about him donating his programme collection to the University of Huddersfield.

Does that look like proper scrutiny to you?

I took Martyn Sadler to task (along with a few others) on twitter. He's replied saying that RFL officials don't answer the questions you want and that fans should petition for sports bodies to be subject to FOI if we want investigative journalism.

Seems like he's not bothered. If I remember correctly investigative journalism has been around a lot longer than FOI.

As for Danny Lockwood in League Weekly he's on some rant about glamour girls in darts in his editorial which is bafflingly irrelevant to anyone but him by the looks of it.

I don't think anyone in the world is worth, or needs, a salary of £314k. I don't particularly like Wood, but that's probably down to his physical appearance than performance. It is difficult to comment on his success, or lack of it, as I do not know what his performance indicators & job description were. But if he had a contract which has been terminated then it is not unusual to get a pay off. Usually a year or 2 year's salary. I wonder how many of those objecting to Wood's salary because he is fat also object to also take the time to object to inflated salaries of bankers, hedge fund managers, CEOs of failing companies who are really screwing the country.

Isn't £314k the weekly take home pay of Alexis Sanchez ?

Where else do you expect the airline to fit him in, apart from luggage?

i've sent a tweet to the RFL making this very point. Think we ought to send a few more their way

Luv it.

I can't for the life of see how he can get that amount as he resigned

Thats what happens at the top of business. You agree a package, then resign to make it look amicable.

This isn't a clerk resigning to join another company for a few extra hundred quid.

Unfortunately true; someone approaches him and says "It's not working any more Nige - we need you to go..." and from there, a negotiation towards a settlement agreement happens. It's then publicised as being his decision - and the confidentiality of that will be written in for both sides - hence the RFL not talking to journos about the detail.

Personally, I think on many occasions people end up walking away with a generous pay-off, when a bit more intestinal fortitude from the organisation would see them gone for a lot less - but we're all fearful of a protracted and expensive employment tribunal. That can be avoided by better governance - if the senior exec has a clear set of KPI's and the process of achieving them, or not, is properly managed, it's easier to get rid of them for free if they haven't delivered. I can't see any metric by which Nige has delivered 300k worth of value to RL year on year, but if no one has agreed with him what that looks like, it's hard to formally prove that he hasn't.

Bigger picture, they are crazy sums of money for a sport that scratches around for cash; the RFL needs a complete shake-up - 300k would get you a serious operator who could deliver that - but we're very parochial at that level, hence the committee mans meteoric rise to fat cat status.