Those of you who enjoyed that article and find it "honest" can't see the forest for the trees.
Neither can those who think Miller and Wallace are the only ones at fault.
I agree miller and Wallace are all tip and no iceberg but they were very well paid to fail so miserably.
I think people are a bit tired of very highly paid executives (football or industry) passing the buck.
By hey if you like your membership wasted on them then feel free to allow them to pass the buck.
And there in lies the whole problem. Because people blame wallace and miller so much, that if one of them points out any deficiencies within the club, heads get buried in the sand and cries of buck passing, defection and making excuses get bandied around.
Read the thread. Not one person has made a claim that wallace and or Miller are blameless. Not One!!
But many people want to dismiss what he has said, just because of personal feelings towards him.
This is why the club has been so poo for so long, because a small number of people are used as scapegoats, while the deeper insidious rot remains. If any of these scapegoats make a claim about problems within the club making their job more difficult it is instantly dismissed as sour grapes and ignored.
The powers that be knew that when things went astray all they needed was a bit of blood letting to keep the simple minded, blood lusting, feral hordes at bay and they could go back to their incompetent ways and would be left alone.
The question has been asked in this thread a number of times, but never answered. What claims has miller made that were wrong?
Lets look at Millers direct quotes only, and ignore an imbecile jounos take on things.
From year one, the biggest concern was (that) the board - and I was part of that board - made a decision not to finance the football division, and that was a mistake,
True or False? Did the board decide not to finance the football dept? If so, was that a mistake or a good decision, in football terms?
We were under-resourced in recruiting and under-resourced in development. Completely
True or False?
We had to pull our head in (as a club), but the footy division suffered and, in the end, so did Terry's reputation. That was the unfortunate by-product of the decision to get the club back on its feet financially
True or false? The part about terry's reputation is an opinion only, so it cant be a true or false answer, butto concentrate on that aspect of the quote ignores the important part. Did the footy department suffer as a result of not getting adequate finance?
If you think back to Terry's first year (2005), we had a $26,000 recruiting budget, no full-time recruiting staff and no development officers.
True or False?
That's a far cry from what the board has put in place for (new coach) Damien Hardwick, which is the right way to go,
True or False? Has the club increased spending in the football deptartment now? If So is that a good thing, or should it have left how it was?
I never felt that Terry enjoyed the total support he needed to be a successful coach
Being a personal opinion, this is hard to gauge and could be an excuse for a mate. His comparisons to the support he recieved at North, who won a premiership are interesting though.
At the Kangaroos, we were blessed with a real camaraderie at the top with people like Ron Casey and Bob Ansett, and good people round you like Denis Pagan and Mark Dawson and Geoff Walsh.
We looked after each other and that's vital to everyone's peace of mind, to each other's sanity
Ron would come in every day and ask, `What can I do for you, pal?'. That was the president's opening line, and I always knew he was in my corner, and that was comforting
I doubt if any one here would be in a position to question the truth of this statment, but it sounds like a culture that breeds success.
Was this the sort of culture within at Richmond?
It's the environment down there that needs all the people at the top to bind together and to become the impregnable force that Geelong has shown with the (Brian) Cooks and the (Frank) Costas and Neil Balme.
Is this a fair enough statement or can a club still be successful without unity at the top?
No, it wasn't as simple as lack of money. It's probably a lack of unity between the big four at a footy club - president, CEO, director of football and coach. I just reckon one of the key elements of success is that impregnable force you (can) create by looking after each other. I don't think that was there.
If you're not confident in yourself, you start protecting yourself and by protecting yourself, you're not protecting each other. It's a survival thing
So, was the unity there at Richmond that enabled the people that mattered to go about their job without having to watch their own back all the time?
All of these things, to me anyway, seem like exactly the sort of problems that will see a club perform as miserably as Richmond have for nearly three decades.
So if you want to believe that everthing has been hunky dory at the club and that only the coach and football manager shoulder all the blame that's fine. If you want to bury your head in the sand and dismiss what seem like reasonable, constructive criticisms from a bloke who has seen how a successful, premiership winning club is run, just because you don't like him, then fine.
I just hope you have a very good saint to pray to every night, because if these claims are true, and are not rectified, then only a miracle will see us emerge from the mire.
Just has no-one in this thread has said Miller and Wallace are not blameless, I am not saying that. I have a very low opinion of wallace, and dont know enough about Miller to make a judgment, but course they carry a fair burden of responsability, but I also believe that the problems go much deeper that just these two individuals.
It should also be noted that Miller does put his hand up for some things and admits he was not up scratch.
From year one, the biggest concern was (that) the board - and I was part of that board - made a decision not to finance the football division, and that was a mistake
There's no doubt I took on too many things (at Richmond). I probably did a lot of things OK, but I'll be the first to say I wasn't the best footy director
I know it wont enough to keep the lynch mobs at bay, but if he was part of the problem, then that part of the problem is now gone.
But do the other parts of the problem remain in place still, or do you honestly believe that simply sacking him and Wallace will deliver us utopia at last?
