Richmond out of the frying pan and on fire
Patrick Smith
The Australian
May 27, 2005
THIS did not seem a particularly smart battle plan. Not with his presidency and board under siege. Not with his enemies appearing to all but surround him. If it was not quite Nero having a good old fiddle while Rome got a little hot under the toga, it didn't seem too far removed.
Clinton Casey, president of Richmond, paddled down the Nile while all manner of supporters, members and media were hell-bent on putting him and his administration to the torch. Punt Road was tinder looking for a flame.
The club had lost the last 14 games of season 2004, had knocked up an operating loss of $2.2 million, and past directors, players and interested parties in the media demanded a change in administration.
Yet Casey paddled on. From Egypt, the president moved on to Italy and the Greek Islands. It had been a holiday planned well in advance for his family and he was determined to honour the commitment. His business and football duties meant family time was precious.
Rather than appearing a cavalier approach and therefore detrimental to Casey's plan to stay around for another three years, his absence seemed to enhance his prospects of re-election. In his words, it took the flames out of the argument.
The opposition ticket led by Charles Macek and Brendan Schwab - both former directors of the club - effectively had the pulpit to themselves while Casey and family pondered the pyramids.
Macek, Schwab and their running mates were the men to extract the Tigers from debt as well as the depths of the AFL ladder was the message. Their words, though, were deemed to be rhetoric alone. They had been at the wheel before. While they were hardly seen as returning to the scene of a crime, it was well argued that they had previously cut and run.
While last place on the ladder and a $2 million-plus loss left Casey vulnerable, he was able to show he had the support of the AFL and that his promise of the best new CEO and coach available to work within a bold but sustainable three-year plan was achievable. He has delivered handsomely.
The president won easily when the members came to vote. Wise folk all of them.
The Tigers now stand third on the ladder with seven wins from nine games. The club will turn 2004's massive loss into a profit by season's end and the AFL commission this week deemed the club's turnaround remarkable. CEO Steven Wright has most impressed the AFL. Terry Wallace's work speaks for itself.
Which in Wallace's case is here, there and everywhere. His off the record briefing with the Beijing media on Richmond's interchange rotation policy left few present in doubt that he used a solarium.
The former Western Bulldogs coach has been on everything - radio, television, the back foot, the high horse. He was this week defending his comments that the club was in disarray on his arrival. He was taken out of context, for he genuinely meant club rooms, offices and the like. He did not mean to reflect on the work of the previous coach, Danny Frawley.
He was on his high horse when he reacted so sensitively to comments from Chris Connolly about his entrance into the debate on caffeine. Wallace went looking for hurt and dismay that wasn't really there.
But his work away from the media cannot be downplayed, according to Casey. He works the corporates and sponsors as willingly and as effectively as he does the media. So everybody wins.
Casey's new three-year term will see him eight years as club boss, a contribution history will deem significant. Casey has survived because he has learnt from his mistakes.
He previously had tried to turn the team's off-field performance around by sinking money into the football department, hoping that an improved win-loss ratio would be a financial driver. In the past three years the Tigers could not finish better than 13th. That's a driver all right - to oblivion.
His decision to appoint Greg Miller to control the football department has brought it greater discipline, and the success of that has no doubt prompted Collingwood to look at a similar move for the highly regarded CEO, Greg Swann. Sydney has moved in that direction, too, with Andrew Ireland. There is a change of emphasis in football governance and it is for the better.
Andrew Demetriou told the recent meeting of CEOs that the commission had not seen a better collection of head men. The new boys include Wright, Steve Harris at Melbourne and Ian Robson at Hawthorn.
Successful businessmen like Casey hold their nerve, identify hot properties (Miller, Wright and Wallace) and have a vision.
Tigers are yellow and in the black. And Casey's critics up the Nile without a paddle.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,15417232%255E12270,00.html
