Alan Jones wants CBA boss to top ARU board

Former Wallabies coach Alan Jones wants outgoing Commonwealth Bank chief executive Ian Narev to fill the shoes of departing Australian Rugby Union boss Bill Pulver.

Jones took a swipe at the ARU panel in April and another on Friday, leaving no senior head out of his firing line.

“Cameron Clyne, John Eales, Brett Robinson. Elizabeth Broderick; you know nothing about rugby, get off the board. Ann Sherry, nothing, get off the board,” Jones told Fairfax Media.

Pulver announced last Friday he would step down once a replacement was found, on the same day the ARU revealed they were whittling Perth-based Western Force out of the Australian Super Rugby franchise.

The names of former Waratahs boss Greg Harris and outgoing Canterbury Bulldogs chief executive Raelene Castle, who will leave the NRL club in December, have been raised as potential replacements.

But Jones, who coached the Wallabies to Grand Slam and Bledisloe Cup victories in the 1980s, isn’t having a bar of it.

“You can’t be serious about handing the game over to people like this, it’s nonsense,” Jones said.

“The whole board has got to change.”

He said Australian rugby needs people with demonstrated knowledge, passion and success at its helm.

“Narev would be an outstanding CEO,” he said of the CBA boss and Kiwi.

“He’s a passionate rugby fan. Secondly, he’s managed a stack of people.

“Narev knows that there have been some cultural problems in the Commonwealth Bank and they are significant cultural problems but he inherited a stack of them.

“I think he’s a very decent man but he knows the difference between black and red figures.”

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