Interesting article , apologies if its already been posted
http://www.news.com.au/sport/afl/wouldbe-richmond-takeover-group-are-just-a-pub-rabble/news-story/0b68bedb6886628600e6a832f6116253
Here's the full article for those who can't access it behind the paywall.
New stripes not Tigers’ solutionNews.com.au
4 August 2016As the AFL heavies yesterday prepared to tell the 18 clubs how the $2.5 billion broadcast money would be distributed, they must have had second thoughts. It wasn’t Melbourne’s cold winter that chilled the administrators to their bones. It was the confirmation that football club environs are the natural habitats of idiots and buffoons.
As the burgeoning reports of a challenge to the Richmond directors became more defined over the past week, it became clear that a group of men — no women apparently — had met at a suburban pub with plans to reshape the board. Sheer lunacy.
Do these people really think a board that has turned a $5 million debt into $2m in the bank, that has established a VFL team, that has drawn membership to 70,000, that has built a new training and administration facility and is rated No 1 in the AFL’s assessment of board governance deserves this rabble of a takeover?
Rather than stroke their egos in cheap pub talk they should have approached club president Peggy O’Neill and chief executive Brendon Gale about their trepidations. An adult discussion about their concerns would have benefited both parties. An exchange of ideas.
It is unclear what seriously bothers the challengers. Is it really believable that this group wants to turn over a successful group of directors because they think there are too many lawyers sitting around the board table? Is this really the best thought they came up with after piling into the pub?
The embryonic challenge is based on one poor year of on-field results. The Tigers, finalists for the previous three years, winning 42 of 69 games, have won seven of 18 this season. It is a poor year. No one would walk away from that.
Yet after winning the 2008 premiership, the hot Hawthorn list could win just nine of 22 matches in 2009 and it had 21 of its 22 premiership players. The only one missing was retired champion Shane Crawford. Hawthorn had a bad year, that’s all. It happens. This season they are closing in on a rare share of history — to be only the second club to win four consecutive premierships.
Damien Hardwick is a good coach. He was given a two-year extension at the start of this season but only after rigorous, almost pedantic, review. This was no reappointment on a whim.
As the Tigers faltered this year, commentators jumped all over themselves to analyse the list. No good. Only five players were rated gifted — Alex Rance, Trent Cotchin, Jack Riewoldt, Dustin Martin and Brett Deledio. The rest you wouldn’t feed to the chooks.
If that is the case — and the evidence is strong — then Hardwick is some sort of coach. To take a list with a handful of talent into a hat-trick of finals is proof enough of his ability to coach. That the Tigers did not win one of their three finals appearances in that run is an insight into the quality and depth of the list. Its threshold was making the finals, winning one was beyond it.
There will be change on the Richmond board but it will be orderly and not run to the timing of a group convened in a pub. The directors know that the board is constantly assessed to ensure that it has the right mix of skills for current and future challenges. A nominations committee then assesses likely new directors.
There appears more than a soupcon of sexism in the mutterings of the challenges. As if the board cannot be any good because the chair is a woman, Peggy O’Neal. And UYet she is one of the most successful club leaders in the competition.
What is most telling is the pub group’s inability to articulate what is wrong with the board — sorry, it’s got too many lawyers sitting on it. They cannot challenge the board on its financial management or its vision.
To suggest that the board might want to have a look at the football department is so feeble as to damn the challengers. For heaven’s sake, the board has already ordered an independent review.
The AFL administrators have seen would-be coups before and they frighten them. They are loath to give their money to novices and cheerleaders.
It is not enough to have put money into the club or been a member since your father sat you on his shoulders to see the great Royce Hart. The smell of football changing rooms can be intoxicating. Just to call a player by his first name and shake his hand can make people swoon.
Football clubs have rendered the smartest businessmen into prattling idiots. Richmond is a well-run club. The challenge to the board is unwarranted and pure mischief but, no doubt, bubbles in a glass or three of ego.
