The brash, young Christian campaigner behind sacked Wallabies star Israel Folau's $2million fighting fund is a computer nerd who studied to become a lawyer.
Martyn Iles, the 29-year-old managing director of the Australian Christian Lobby, shot to prominence this week after Go Fund Me shut down Folau's crowd funding campaign to fight Rugby Australia in the Fair Work Commission.
The self-described 'computer geek' stepped up late on Monday, setting up a new plea for donations which raised more than $2million in just two days, or almost triple the $765,000 from a politically-correct American crowd-funding site.
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Martyn Iles, the 29-year-old managing director of the Australian Christian Lobby, shot to prominence this week
As the donations poured in from 'quiet Australians' concerned about religious freedom, Mr Iles was in demand for TV interviews, appearing on The Project, Sunrise and Today.
His public profile surged, little more than a year after he replaced Lyle Shelton as the face of the ACL with an office in Canberra.
Overnight, he became Folau's chief ally after Rugby Australia chief executive Raelene Castle last month sacked the Wallabies star for tweeting that 'drunks, homosexuals, fornicators, adulterers, liars, fornicators, thieves, atheists and idolaters' needed to repent for their sins or they would go to Hell.
His paraphrasing of a Biblical verse from Corinthians, in the New Testament, was arguably about more than just a breach of an employment contract.
The man leading the fight, Mr Iles, is the son of a Brisbane
