Miller's legacy is toothless Tigers
Caroline Wilson | August 3, 2007 | The Age
GREG Miller went to Richmond towards the end of the 2002 season. His brief was to oversee the Tigers' ailing football fortunes, support the struggling Danny Frawley and instil some "Shinboner" spirit and winning culture into a club that had forgotten how.
Miller called for patience from fans. He asked for five years. Even when he stood for the Tigers' board at the end of 2004 to save Clinton Casey's reputation and presidency, Miller never sold his North Melbourne shares, insisting he was holding them in trust for Bob Ansett.
Now the five years that Miller requested are drawing to a close. Despite Frawley's overall lack of success at Richmond and Jeff Gieschen's before that — in fact, we could go back to 1983 — never did the club under those two regimes finish a season with one win, as the Tigers may do this year.
It has been said that Terry Wallace — whom Miller appointed to a five-year deal at the end of 2004 as part of Casey's legacy, which left the club in debt to the tune of $4 million — has escaped scrutiny this season. But surely Miller, by any stretch of the imagination, must be seen to have failed the club he joined to help win a premiership.
Casey left the club soon after the members re-elected him — as we predicted he would — and his successor, Gary March, appears to have diluted some of Miller's power, or tried to. No longer does Miller have an open chequebook to sign players and any push to sign a footballer for more than three years must get board approval.
Recruiting responsibility is no longer Miller's but when he, Wallace, March and chief executive Steve Wright met in Sydney last weekend on a new blueprint for the football operation, Miller remained at the helm of the football department.
While some unrest continues at board level regarding his position as a director elected by members while on a six-figure contract, Miller, to date, has resisted any subtle pressure to stand down. He still owns his Kangaroos shares and continues to thrust himself forward as the club's front man in times of crisis.
After the debacle against Geelong three months ago, he inflamed the situation with an emotional directive to members that became back-page news — a directive sent out without full knowledge of the board and of which March was given little notice.
It was put to Miller that the club seems to have gone backwards since he took over. He pointed to the stable board, high membership and successive profits. This was cheeky. That Richmond again will make a million-dollar profit this year without special AFL assistance is, according to the AFL, due to the good work of chief executive Wright.
Consider Miller's early moves at Richmond. He urged the board to extend Frawley's contract to remove pressure from the coach and in his first draft, he effectively traded away picks two, 18, 28 and 32 for Kane Johnson and Jay Schulz.
At the end of 2004, when he was running several other businesses, including a juice bar in which several Richmond players invested, he tried to recruit Rex Hunt to the board to help Casey fight off a challenge, only to learn that Hunt was not a member.
March, Wright and Wallace, at various points this season, have excused the litany of football mistakes of that time, saying that Miller has been forced to do too much. But no one forced him to devote time outside the club to other interests.
Then he stood himself and virtually ran Casey's campaign as well as signing Wallace and choosing Brett Deledio, Richard Tambling, Danny Meyer, Adam Pattison and Dean Polo with the Tigers' prized first five picks in the national draft.
Time could prove us wrong, but when you look at Richmond's youth in the form of its first, second, third and fourth-year players, they do not present as a potential force in 2011, the year the club has earmarked as high noon on the premiership clock.
It wasn't Miller's fault that Nathan Brown broke his leg but most of the recycled players chosen during his time have not worked.
A Richmond premiership player commented before the recent Hawthorn clash that he looked forward to watching the Richmond "pygmies" take on Hawthorn's "land of the giants". That game cruelly exposed two football strategies that left the Tigers wanting. In the Port Adelaide disaster, the club's youth was used as an excuse and yet the Richmond players averaged 64 games to Port's 69.
Miller vowed to lure old Tigers back to Tigerland but still no former player sits on the Richmond board.
It is true that Wallace, too, should be feeling the pressure. Not for the first time in his football career has he come to Tigerland with a big reputation, only to see it sullied and he, like the rest of the football department, must take responsibility for the club's poor player choices, including the rucking deficiency in 2007.
Wallace's dismal self-fulfilling prophecy at the start of the season backfired on the club and cannot have helped the spirit among the players.
Player development does not appear to be his strong point and Craig McRae will soon have a new boss in the form of an overall development manager for whom the club will advertise from tomorrow.
But while Wallace has proved he can reinvent himself, Miller — whose cunning, charismatic style worked so well in the '90s — is another question.
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