New Sport NZ boss Raelene Castle brings her battle scars

By Suzanne McFadden for LockerRoom

Raelene Castle is back from Australia to run Sport New Zealand, as its first female chief executive. She sits down with LockerRoom's Suzanne McFadden and explains how the things she learned in turmoil can help our sport.

On the eve of her return to New Zealand sport - after seven, often tumultuous years in Australia - Raelene Castle pauses for a breath when asked how she's changed since she left.

"I still try to be optimistic about the opportunities, I'm still glass half-full about things," says Castle, who headed across the Tasman after six years as CEO of Netball New Zealand, for top jobs in rugby league and then rugby.

"But I do now have more experience around how to deal with difficult problems, difficult people, challenging environments. I spent seven years dealing with those things, so I think I bring that experience, and hopefully it allows me to cut to the core of the issue more quickly."

Challenging issues like the salary cap scandal at Canterbury Bankstown Bulldogs NRL club, and the Israel Folau saga and broadcasting rights stoush at Rugby Australia. Troubles that rigorously tested her leadership.

Now Castle is back home, ready to run Sport New Zealand, an organisation not without its own issues. And it's not a job she intends to do alone.

"You have to take the people with you. Everyone has to want to get there," she says.

The first woman to lead the country's sports system, Castle admits she felt she'd done her dash with sport after resigning from Rugby Australia back in April - just two and a half years into the job, much of it spent under siege. She was looking to return to her roots in the commercial world, where she'd worked for 15 years before joining Netball NZ.

But when Peter Miskimmin announced in August he was stepping down from his 12-year tenure as chief executive of Sport NZ, the timing was perfect for Castle, who was stuck in New South Wales and wanting to come home.

She'd been gone since 2013, when she finished at Netball New Zealand to become the first woman chief executive in the Canterbury-Bankstown league club's 80-year history.

Now back in Auckland, having served her two weeks' quarantine in Christchurch, Castle says she has no regrets about her time spent working in Australia.

"Even if you'd told me how hard it was going to be, I'd still do it again," the 49-year-old says. "There would be a few things I'd do differently and make some different choices."

She's proud of introducing equal pay for Australian female sevens players, and her "ability to stand up and lead through some really difficult things, like the Israel Folau issue, which was really challenging," she says.

"But the reward out of that, standing up for the values that we had as an organisation, was the literally hundreds of emails and people who stopped me in the street and said: 'Thank you for standing up for us'."

But Castle was also bullied and under constant attack from rugby's old guard. She even received a death threat from a Folau supporter after the Wallaby fullback was sacked for posting homophobic messages on social media, breaching Rugby Australia's code of conduct.

So she takes myriad lessons from her last three roles heading sports organisations into her new post: "Too many to talk about in this interview!" she laughs. "My dad would call it experience; I would call them battle scars."

In between jobs, Castle had to re-think what her future might look like. Being caught in the Covid-19 lockdown in New South Wales made Castle and her partner, property developer Greg Jones, realise they wanted to return home.

"I probably got back to New Zealand quicker than I thought; I thought it might be another four years until the next Rugby World Cup, but that's obviously where we got to," she says.

"I had thought about coming back to maybe work in a government department to be able to contribute, not necessarily in a sports role," she says.

Then she heard Miskimmin's news and saw the chief executive job advertisement ("about a dozen Kiwis sent it to me, in case I'd missed it," she laughs). While she had a "very long think about it" before applying, having been out of the New Zealand sports system for a while, it was a job that resonated with her.

"There's a role that Sport NZ plays in being part of a sector that can deliver great outcomes for New Zealanders, particularly young people. I was really passionate about that and wanting to actually give something back to New Zealand," Castle says.

After all, sport runs thickly in her blood - the daughter of a Kiwis rugby league captain, Bruce Castle, and a three-time Commonwealth Games bowls medallist, Marlene Castle. Raelene was also a New Zealand bowls champion herself.

She had recently done contract work for Sport NZ, as part of the 'Strengthen and Adapt' project, which gave her an insight into how Sport NZ planned to inject $25.4 million extra government funding into sports affected by Covid-19. "It seemed like an exciting time to be involved with some genuine resource and buy-in from the sector," she says.

It's her first time employed by a crown entity, and she's looking forward to working with Grant Robertson, now Deputy Prime Minister, who's held on to the sport and recreation portfolio in the new Cabinet.

In the last term, Robertson made women's sport his priority. Does Castle share his concern for women and girls in sport?

"It's always an interesting challenge. As a female, I've never wanted to be seen overtly supporting one part [of sport] - particularly women and girls," she says.

"But they have been under-represented for too long, and the focus they're receiving now is absolutely deserved and must continue. But at the same time, all sport has to have the focus."

Castle has her views on where female sport needs help most.

"Women's sport is at a stage where we have great idols - from Yvette Williams through to Dame Valerie Adams, and everyone in between. So in Olympic sport, we've held men and women in the same conversation. But it's the team sport piece that hasn't caught up," she says.

"Where women play the same code as men, there's a challenge in making sure they have opportunities to grow and develop as men did in their time."

The two foundations to that growth, she says, are "absolutely world-class" coaching, and strength and conditioning support for athletes: "If you get those bits right, then the commercial bits follow."

But it's the girls who stop playing sport at 13 that's the critical issue needing attention, Castle says. "We need innovation to keep them, if not in sport, then in keeping them active and healthy."

With the 'Big Four' events scheduled for New Zealand over the next three years - three women's World Cups and the world's largest women in sports conference - Castle says the biggest challenge will be creating a legacy for young women.

"When we have the three women's World Cups on our shores, 'if you can see it, you can be it' will be incredibly important. But it's also the work that happens after them, so where are the next generation of coaches and volunteers for the explosion of new participants?" she says.

"We need to make sure we have the coaching and support structures in place so every young girl who wants to play cricket, rugby or football can have that opportunity."

Among the concerning issues in sport in New Zealand that need to be addressed are the growing number of sports organisations that have come under investigation over the welfare of female athletes - some of those investigations are ongoing.

Castle says it would be unrealistic to think there wouldn't be challenges that come with the handover of the role next month.

"It's the nature of a sporting environment with competitive people, but society is also going through incredible changes at the moment - with what's now expected around inclusion and diversity and respectful relationships. With the #metoo and #BlackLivesMatter movements, we're living in a special time, and sport isn't immune to that," she says.

"There are some investigations underway, and when I get a full briefing then I will get up to speed with them. But that's where you hope your experience comes to the fore because you have faced similar changes before."

When she headed Netball NZ, Castle was called the most powerful woman in New Zealand sport. But she won't think of herself as now the most powerful person in New Zealand sport, "because sport is a sector involving a lot of people," she says.

"Sport NZ can't deliver sport, so it's about the relationships we have with our sports and recreation partners, and the government, to make sure we can improve those experiences. Our role is connection. I think there's an opportunity for us to collaborate more. I think we compete for customers and participants."

Castle's family, she says, are proud of her new role, but it doesn't give her any sway to get out of drying the dishes. "My Mum and Dad and my brother are happy to have us closer in these weird Covid times," she says.

She would have liked to have "packed up and gone to Italy for three months" after she left Rugby Australia, but the borders, of course, were closed then. Initially, she found it difficult taking time out.

"Your head says you don't need a break, that you're ready to go again. That's probably my determination and stubbornness," she says. "But in reality, I did. I'd had two-and-a-half years of really intense time at rugby, and it certainly didn't finish the way I wanted it to. You have to process that and deal with it.

"I spoke to a really good friend who'd just come out of an incredibly big corporate job, and he said to me: 'It took me six months and there were days when I didn't want to get out of bed or go exercising'. That was helpful.

"I didn't have any 'can't get out bed' days. But de-stressing and processing it all took time. I spent some really great time with Greg and with our friends."

The couple will have homes in both Auckland and Wellington, commuting between the two cities each week. Most of Castle's work time will be spent in the capital.

But part of the reason she returned to New Zealand was to spend time with her teenage niece and nephew in Auckland. And, naturally, watch them play sport.

-This story originally appeared on the Newsroom website and was republished with permission.