When football boards come under attackDaniel Cherny
The Age
11th September 2016"A lot of people come on board and think they've got all the answers," says former Melbourne player and director Stephen Bickford.
You might have noticed that in the last seven days. The rebel Richmond "Focus on Football" ticket, a colourful bunch featuring among others a premiership captain, a shell-collecting cardiologist and a comb-over-sporting coterie member, vow they will cure the Tigers' ills if they are handed power later in the year. Tigers president Peggy O'Neal has called for calm – urging her constituency not to allow a horror on-field year to tear the club apart and lead to a reversion to the bad old days.
By the standards of the past 35 years, Richmond's last decade has been remarkably stable. In the eyes of those who want change – led by Dr Martin Hiscock – too stable. The rot of inertia is said to have set in.
Such schism is nothing new at football clubs. Power struggles are almost as old as the game itself.
Bickford was in the middle of one of this century's most volcanic episodes, the Melbourne board spill of 2001. Bickford had been a member of Joseph Gutnick's board, but with growing discontent about his volatile leadership, a split emerged. Gutnick stood down mid-season, hoping to win back his position at year's end, but failed to topple new president Gabriel Szondy.
"It wasn't exactly the same [as the Richmond situation], there was no overthrow of the particular current board, it's just that there was an extraordinary general meeting requested by Joseph and that's what happened," Bickford said.
"Melbourne was very sensitive because obviously five years earlier we'd had the merger [threat]. So at the time all Melbourne members wanted was just solidarity, which at the time was difficult to get.
"That had to come to a head, and thankfully it did."
Six years later John Gdanski found himself in a similar spot, concerned about where St Kilda was heading under the reign of flamboyant president Rod Butterss. Gdanski defected to the "Footy First" (sound familiar?) ticket of challenger Greg Westaway, a push that ultimately proved successful.
"I had Nathan Burke and Andrew Thompson with me," Gdanski said.
"They're life-long friends both those guys and we thought to ourselves, 'is the club going in the right direction?'"
"The worry was the club's interests were not at the forefront. I went to the president at the time and asked him to stand down. He said 'no,' and then the board spill agreed.
"Eventually he agreed, because the new ticket had enough votes."
The common theme between the Richmond situation, that at St Kilda, and the Demons mess was that on-field expectations were not being met. Having made a barnstorming run to the 2000 grand final, the Dees' start to 2001 had been underwhelming. Likewise the Saints had fallen out of the top eight in 2007 following three straight finals appearances. That's the same script as has been followed at Punt Road – where the fall down the ladder this year followed the September disappointments of 2013, '14 and '15.
While results from a football department review led by chief executive Brendon Gale are set to be released in the coming days, it is not enough for Hiscock's group, who not only want to lure Neil Balme back from Collingwood to head the Tigers' football operations, but also to make coach Damien Hardwick change his game plan.
That wasn't the way Gdanski and his fellow Saints agitators operated.
"We didn't look at the football department," Gdanski said.
"We never commented on the game plan. It was not our responsibility."
Bickford is similarly disapproving of Richmond lobbyists' modus operandi.
"I think some of the comments have been a bit naive – asking them to change their football philosophy etc," Bickford said.
"A board cannot tell a coach what to do.
"If they aren't up to it, then you get rid of the, But you don't interrupt them when they're trying to do their job."
Not that he is surprised. In sport, winning papers over everything, but when the team is losing, everyone is an expert. Melbourne have found this out more recently than 2001, too.
"It's just unfortunate that the football team [has struggled]. And if they don't perform, a lot of people get agitated," he said.
"That's what happened I suppose when Jimmy [Stynes] wanted to come on board.
"From 2000 to 2006 we made the finals five times. We had one bad year in 2007, 2008 wasn't looking too good and Jim decided to get involved.
"Poor on-field performances can cause tickets to form and challenge the incumbent board.
"The football does make people get agitated. A lot of them probably don't have enough football nous, or even business nous to understand the socialistic demands of being in the AFL."
Then there are past players and the "white knight" effect.
In Richmond's case, 1980 premiership players Bryan Wood and Bruce Monteath are challenging a board featuring former Tigers skipper Tony Free, and that will soon contain their grand final teammate Emmett Dunne.
Prominent art dealer Lauraine Diggins was on Ian Collins' ticket that ousted longstanding Carlton president John Elliott at the end of their annus horribilis, 2002: a year in which the Blues claimed their first wooden-spoon, and incurred the salary cap penalties that badly wounded the club. Without naming names, Diggins – the Blues' first female director – urged caution when it came to voting for footballers.
"Members hero-worship players and don't necessarily appreciate that great players don't necessarily make good contributors at board level, and good representation of the club in a different environment to the playing field," Diggins said.
"That's one of the things that I learned quite significantly."
While football club elections have an emotional toll – they can also create a significant financial burden. And as some at Richmond are privately arguing, they are too easy to cause. The rebels need just 100 signatures to cause an EGM – a pittance considering the club's membership of more than 72,000.
In an increasingly professional era of player pathways, coaching courses and investment in developing administrators, causing a ruckus at board level remains within the domain of amateurs. Veteran player agent Peter Jess - a man not afraid to think outside the square - says the AFL should consider enforcing protocols to ensure prospective directors don't destroy their clubs if they happen to gain power.
"What we need to start to do is have it so that each club signs up to an agreed protocol that anybody that wants to be part of a football club directorship must have an induction process where they get to learn about the business of sport and more importantly the football club," Jess said.
"What that means is that when people come into the football club, they already understand what goes on. They don't have their trainer wheels on for the first 12 months."
While Hardwick threw his support behind O'Neal and Gale at Thursday night's Jack Dyer medal count, there remains an appetite for change among the rank and file of Richmond.
Whether that means the board goes – or just change in middle management remains to be seen. But as Gdanski notes, and O'Neal stressed at the best and fairest function – decisions must be made in the members' interests.
"If the members want a change, they should listen," Gdanski said.
And he adds that sometimes change prevails, purely because it is change.
"It's not the vote for the person, it's the vote against the person that wins."
http://www.smh.com.au/afl/afl-news/richmond-board-battle-when-afl-clubs-come-under-attack-20160910-grdf7u.html
