ANDREW BEWS: Unstable influences threaten Tigers' future
Geelong Advertiser
May 20th, 2009
IF Richmond is not careful, it could be the next club to follow the same fate of Fitzroy and South Melbourne or, even worse, fold.
Why is that? Simply, because it is a club which in the past 25 years has had no stability at the helm, with no fewer than 11 coaches who have hung on to the merry-go-round.
That's nearly one coach for every two years. To add weight to that, in the past 25 years they have had seven chief executive officers and eight presidents. Who knows how many different board members, committee members etc?
Successful clubs have stable administrations and long-term coaches. Kevin Sheedy reigned at Essendon while all this mess was occurring. No wonder he never went back!
Hawthorn under Jeans and Joyce, North under Pagan, Brisbane under Matthews, Geelong and Adelaide under Blight, Collingwood under Matthews and West Coast under Malthouse have tasted the ultimate success. Even Port Adelaide has had good consistent success under the stability of the one coach, Mark Williams. It is no coincidence that these successful periods also involved long-term and successful administrations.
The most successful club of the past 25 years has been Hawthorn. It has had four presidents in that time and seven CEOs.
Both Geelong and North Melbourne are similar. The Kangas have had eight presidents and five CEOs, the Cats just four presidents and six CEOs with at one stage three CEOs in two years.
As much as successful clubs have a tightly-run organisation, the opposite would have to be said for unsuccessful outfits.
Good administration supports and encourages its coaching panel. Out of the 11 coaches the Tigers appointed throughout that period they could not have all been bad.
From the halcyon days when Tom Hafey took over in 1966, Richmond has never stemmed the bleeding. It has continued to flow under the surface. Tommy was sacked under dubious circumstances at the end of 1976 when the Tigers finished seventh, just a game and a half from the finals. In the previous five years the Tigers had played off in three grand finals for two wins.
It could well appear Tommy was the fall guy for a player deal, in which Francis Jackson, Brian Roberts and Graham Teasdale were sent packing from Richmond for John Pitura.
This left a sour taste within the hierarchy and somebody had to be seen to be doing something, so after 10 years at the helm and four premierships under his belt it was time for Tommy to go. The coaching merry-go-round then began and the club's results apart from 1980 have gone from bad to worse. And that premiership under Tony Jewell contained the remnants of Tommy Hafey's group still playing.
So what has happened? In theory, Richmond should be the second strongest club in the competition.
If you take into consideration the tribal factor with all the turmoil, it has simply gone missing.
I remember the early 80s (just!), the support the Tigers had, the MCG could only just keep the faithful in their cages.
They were just so passionate and when they sang Yellow and Black after a victory you got a shiver up the backbone. You haven't heard the song sung with fervour a lot these past few years.
There has been a cloud over Terry Wallace's coaching future at Richmond for some time. Even before the season started.
We've been given the official party line about what happened at Richmond over the past 36 hours but we may never know what really happened within the Tiger lair.
From the outside, it looks like the players are dictating to the club their issues and demands in regard to who coaches the club.
It looks like the tail is wagging the Tiger. The player group would be best to do what they do to the best of their own ability, that is play and let the officialdom organise and run the business.
The Tigers will now put themselves six months behind in their preparation for next year.
Wallace has educated these guys in a certain way for five years now. I don't know if he'll educate them any further from now until the end of the season.
Should a caretaker coach be appointed, there would be a strong possibility that the player group would get a new education, even if that coach didn't maintain the role in 2010, and the club would get the jump on everybody else for the next coach-in-waiting.
Terry has built this group in the five years at the helm; it hasn't worked using the ladder as a scale, they remained on or anchored near the bottom of the ladder.
He simply hasn't impacted like the hierarchy back then, Clinton Casey and Mark Brayshaw, would have hoped. Terry has been a master of his own destiny since retiring as a player and if you break it down, he white-anted Terry Wheeler at Footscray to get the senior job there and stayed there until a better job came up, which at a point in time appeared to be the Sydney job.
Paul Roos was standing in for Rodney Eade but secured the Sydney job, which left Terry in the lurch.
The next best thing that came up was the Tigers' job. Being a master salesman, he sold himself to the Tigers and to this day uses the media to pitch himself and paint the picture with all the colours that he likes. In doing so Terry always comes out on top.
But with a win loss ratio of 1-7, Terry has painted himself into a corner. And there is no way out.
http://www.geelongadvertiser.com.au/article/2009/05/20/71771_geelong_sports.html
