Running a club harder than it looks
16 December 2004 Herald Sun
Mike Sheahan
BILL Barrot's sudden switch of allegiance in the Richmond power struggle illustrates the nonsense of the focus on past players in election campaigns.
In the space of a week, Barrot has been paraded in the media as a high-profile supporter of Big 4 ticket and, all of a sudden, a supporter of Clinton Casey and Greg Miller when it mattered most: on the ballot paper.
Barrot was pictured with Richmond Team of the Century teammates Francis Bourke and Dick Clay in support of the Big 4, but reportedly was furious about quotes attributed to him at the time and jumped ship.
Casey and Miller have mustered little if any support from past players, but Barrot's ballot paper, which gives five of his nine votes to the Casey team, still made them extremely happy.
With due respect to Barrot -- he is a dual premiership centreman -- it is 34 years since he played for the Tigers, and his involvement since has been minimal.
Strangely, the Big 4 group has run a campaign based almost entirely on the call for change from former players from Bourke down.
Nick Daffy voluntarily joined the fray at the weekend, voicing his public support for the challengers on the basis of the disregard he said the Casey administration group had shown former players.
Daffy should be pushing himself, and his credentials, as a young businessman with a growing reputation in hospitality and marketing.
Why, though, is so much stock based on the views of former players?
They are heroes of the club, legendary names, but they are legend for their deeds inside the fence: running, jumping, marking and kicking. Winning premierships.
The game in the boardroom is played under a totally different set of rules. It calls for different skills, for clear thinking and imagination. For business acumen. For old-fashioned nous.
It is totally immaterial whether a bloke played 300-odd games or kicked goals from the centre or was a club captain 100 years ago.
It is a matter of understanding the demands of running a business that turns over roughly $20 million in a highly competitive market.
Of course old players want to see their club successful, but how can they possibly know what's happening from afar. The calls for change at Richmond have come from as far away as Queensland.
That simply is someone saying they're tired of seeing the club at the bottom of the ladder, which is fair enough. It doesn't, though, give any hint at all of a solution.
http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au/footy/common/story_page/0,8033,11704680%255E19742,00.html
