Maurice Lindsay: The ground-breaking innovator who changed face of rugby league

Maurice Lindsay was the man who changed the face of rugby league.

Widely accredited with turning Wigan into the dominant force of the late 1980s and early 90s, Lindsay went on to become one of the game’s most innovative administrators, most famously engineering the ground-breaking move to summer rugby and the advent of Super League.

Lindsay, who has died at the age of 81, overcame initial hostility amid suggestions of controversial mergers to broker a deal with BSkyB’s Rupert Murdoch in 1995 for an £87million jackpot that provided instant wealth for a host of clubs that were on the breadline.

It meant all the leading clubs were able to go full-time, competing on a level playing field with the pioneering Wigan team that, under Lindsay’s direction, had swept all before then up to then.

Lindsay, from a humble background, made his money from a plant-hire firm which he sold to devote himself to Wigan, joining the board in 1979 alongside Jack Robinson, Tom Rathbone and Jack Hilton to form the ‘Gang of Four’.

Breaking the mould, he was directly responsible for recruiting leading overseas coaches Graham Lowe and John Monie and players of the calibre of Dean Bell, Andy Platt, Brett Kenny, Denis Betts, Ellery Hanley, Frano Botica, Joe Lydon, Jason Robinson and Martin Offiah who helped the club to eight League Championships from 1987–96, as well as nine Challenge Cup wins including a record eight in a row.

Under Lindsay’s stewardship, Wigan also won three World Club Championships.

Away from his beloved club, Lindsay was Great Britain team manager for the tours to New Zealand in 1990 and Australia in 1992 and was also elected president of the Rugby Football League in 1992.

He left Wigan at the end of 1992 to succeed David Oxley as