Michael Searle (born 16 July 1968) is an Australian businessman and

rugby league Rugby league football, commonly known as rugby league in English-speaking countries and rugby 13/XIII in non-Anglophone Europe, is a contact sport, full-contact sport played by two teams of thirteen players on a rectangular Rugby league playin ...

football identity. He was the first Chief Executive for the

Gold Coast Titans The Gold Coast Titans are a professional rugby league football club, based on the Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia. The club competes in the National Rugby League (NRL) premiership, Australia's elite rugby league competition. Since 2008, the ...

, whose inaugural season in the

National Rugby League The National Rugby League (also known as the NRL Telstra Premiership for sponsorship reasons) is a professional rugby league competition in Oceania which contains clubs from New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria (state), Victoria, the Austral ...

was 2007. Searle also manages an accountancy firm, an international talent management group and headed the push for an independent commission to take over the running of the NRL. This occurred in 2012.

Playing career

Son of former player Tom Searle, Michael Searle played rugby league in the forwards for the Gold Coast club of the 1980s and 1990s.

Administration career

A month after starting an accountancy firm, at age 29 Searle agreed to lead the Gold Coast's bid for an NRL licence on 15 March 1999. The Titans' first season was the 2007 Telstra Premiership. During the

2012 NRL season The 2012 NRL season was the 105th season of professional rugby league club competition in Australia, and the first run by the newly formed Australian Rugby League Commission. The main competition, called the 2012 NRL Telstra Premiership due to spon ...

it was revealed that the Titans club was heavily in debt and the prospect of bankruptcy hung over the club. Gold Coast managed to recover but it would be Searle's last year in the Chief Executive role.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Searle, Michael Australian rugby league players Gold Coast Chargers players Australian chief executives Living people Australian rugby league administrators 1968 births Place of birth missing (living people) Rugby league forwards 20th-century Australian sportsmen