PNG Chiefs CEO Lorna McPherson has revealed she fled Saudi Arabia after a fatwa was issued against her.
The Scottish-born head of the Port Moresby-based NRL team was working in telecommunications when she moved to the country with her then-11-year-old son at a time when women weren’t legally allowed to drive there.
She has previously said strictly enforced rules about what women could and couldn’t do in Saudi Arabia at the time made her life ‘difficult’, and now she has revealed how badly those problems affected her life.
‘You basically get a fatwa [a formal ruling on a point of Islamic law] when you’re doing something that’s not quite right in a religious way,’ McPherson told The Australian.
‘I was told that I needed to watch myself.
‘Saudi wasn’t how it is now. If you look at the transformation that country has had, it’s been an amazing journey.
PNG Chiefs CEO Lorna McPherson (pictured) has explained why religious officials in Saudi Arabia made her the subject of a fatwa while she worked in the country
McPherson (pictured with Chiefs general manager Michael Chammas, left, and star signing Jarome Luai, centre) was working in the Middle Eastern country before it allowed women to drive legally
‘But when I was there, it was much stricter. I was a woman working in a man’s world.
‘It was segregated. You didn’t have men and women working together in one environment. It wasn’t acceptable.
‘I wasn’t run out of the country, but I thought it was better for me to change jobs.
‘That’s what led me to PNG.’
McPherson had previously said her desire to ‘drive change’ in Saudi Arabia contributed to her leaving the nation.
‘Not being able to drive at the time was unique,’ she said.
‘It was like segregation as well where we had men working in some areas and women working in others and it was genuinely very surreal.
‘There were meetings with men but that was part of the reason I left in the end, it was causing issues about the fact I was a female trying to drive change.’
The Scottish footy powerbroker said that there was a lot of segregation between men and women in Saudi Arabia during her time in the country
The Chiefs have made a bright star under McPherson by shocking the footy world with the signing of Luai
McPherson’s Chiefs are now going about changing the NRL landscape, and they’ve already had some big wins.
Chief among them is the signing of Wests Tigers gun Jarome Luai, who stunned the league when he put pen to paper on a deal that will see him play out of Port Moresby in 2028 and 2029.
The team has also secured the services of Souths star Alex Johnston, Roosters utility Connor Watson and English international Matty Lees.
It’s a brilliant start for the side, and McPherson wants to emulate her sporting hero, legendary Manchester United manager Alex Ferguson, as the club evolves.
‘I liked his honesty. He was a real person. He was never frightened to say things people didn’t like,’ McPherson said.
‘That’s how I am as a person. I don’t have enough time in my day to bulls**t or listen to it from other people.’
