The big guns of Australian sport appear to be set for a game of musical chairs
Tom Smithies
The Daily Telegraph
Former NRL chief executive David Gallop is to replace FFA boss Ben Buckley Source: News Limited
DAVID Gallop's switch to head Football Federation Australia opens the door for a game of top-level musical chairs at the top of Australian sport, with speculation already mounting over a possible return to the AFL for Ben Buckley.
Andrew Demetriou's No.2 at the AFL, Gill McLachlan, is seen as one of the favourites to succeed Gallop at the NRL, which would open the way for Buckley to return to the sport he played at the top level and previously administered for seven years.
But he was also last night being linked again with the vacant CEO's job at North Melbourne, the AFL club where he was vice-captain from 1990 to 1992 and where he played 74 games from 1986-1993.
Though Buckley ruled himself out of the job weeks ago, North Melbourne chairman James Brayshaw suggested yesterday on radio that he would re-approach his quarry now that his departure from the FFA had been confirmed.
"This is all absolute news for me, it'll be very interesting to see what he does because he is a very, very capable man," Brayshaw said in Melbourne.
Though Buckley's family has settled in the eastern suburbs of Sydney, he and his wife both hail from Melbourne.
A former Nike marketing executive in Japan, Buckley was central to the AFL's record television deal in 2005.
McLachlan, meanwhile, was reportedly approached by NRL headhunters last week about succeeding Gallop in the wake of Demetriou's insistence that he wanted to remain AFL boss "indefinitely".
