A small victory for the Tigers’ ‘lunatic fringe’Caroline Wilson
The Age
17 November 2016The resignation of another long-serving Richmond board member and the club's move to legislate against dead wood directorships should be seen as a victory for those challengers to the club who have been portrayed in recent months as the lunatic fringe of AFL supporters.
In many cases those challengers have been cast as a collective laughing stock and yet the fact remains their disenchantment with the Tigers' on-field fortunes and key football decisions was shared by the highly critical Ernst & Young review that ultimately led to a major shake-up.
And there now seems a very good chance that long-serving and highly regarded former Old Xaverians president Robert Ralph, a member of the so-called Malvern Hotel group, could replace the outgoing Tony Free early next year once the club elections are completed.
Ralph, who has the backing of Barry Richardson and Michael Green and who also has close connections with Neil Balme and Daniel Richardson, is one of several candidates thrown up by that group after a meeting with club bosses Peggy O'Neal and Brendon Gale at the end of the season.
That meeting took place after cooler heads prevailed, Balme had been appointed head of football and the club continued its self-admitted slow but steady attempts to reshape the board, which was stacked with too many veteran directors.
The group that met that winter night on Glenferrie Road was a somewhat flexible group of predominantly male supporters of private school background, many connected with the Old Xaverians. Some belatedly joined the group while some of the more shadowy elements who met that night back in August have been dislodged.
But what all had in common was an unashamed frustration with Richmond's on-field progress, a frustration that soon afterwards led to the emergence of the Focus on Football challenge.
Martin Hiscock's Focus on Football was quickly ridiculed and yet if the Tigers' administration and board is honest it should concede it was little wonder Richmond's lack of success led to such an apparently destabilising act of ill-fated and self-destructive madness.
The love of their AFL clubs can cause otherwise mild-mannered supporters to do crazy things and Richmond, as the game's worst-performed club over a number of decades now, should count itself lucky to engender such passion and fanfare. Even if some of the methods adopted have been a little embarrassing.
The more considered view of the Malvern group, whose key organisers Stephen Mandie and Damien Silk had railed against long-serving directorships and initially and unwisely targeted even O'Neil, appears to have modified as has the club's animosity against them.
Gale and O'Neil may say they were working towards change anyway but the fact remains that now two directors have stepped down with at least one more to come with the club recommending to its membership constitutional change in the form of fixed terms.
There is no doubt the Malvern group crystallised the issues facing the board even if Gale was well down the track to achieve football change after serious departmental flaws and player-coach schisms were identified. Should he be required to sack Damien Hardwick during next season the club chief seems better equipped to manage that.
O'Neil has received the board's backing to stand for one more three-year term but under her own recommendation must stand down at the end of 2019. While the club cleverly installed former player Emmett Dunne in as an interim director in the wake of the current members' election, his fellow director Kerry Ryan could face a tougher task in her bid for another term following challenges by Peter Casey and Simon Wallace.
The AFL has no issue with peaceful coups such as the Frank Costa revolution at Geelong that took place almost two decades ago. But it despises board challenges and has gone out of its way to discredit and mock the recent goings on at Richmond.
Where some individuals were concerned the misgivings of Gillon McLachlan and Co were entirely justified. Certainly the days of backroom revolution seem gone but sometimes football clubs need to run out of patience and throw due diligence out with it.
Peter Gordon and the Western Bulldogs showed that to the football world.
http://www.canberratimes.com.au/afl/a-small-victory-for-the-tigers-lunatic-fringe-20161116-gsr0bw.html
