Miller dumped for 'football' reasons
richmondfc.com.au
By Ben Broad
11:55 AM Mon 28 July, 2008
RICHMOND president Gary March said his club’s decision to severe ties with former Greg Miller over the weekend was football-based and aimed at giving his club the best chance of on-field success in coming years.
Speaking at Punt Road on Monday morning – a day after meeting with the former general manager of football operations – March admitted embarrassment at the way the Tigers had handled Miller’s departure from the club he had served for the past six years.
But the Richmond boss said the Tigers had to act to ensure they were in a good position when it came to making their most important football decisions in October.
“What we wanted to do was not be behind the rest of the field,” March said.
“It’s well documented there’s a number of clubs out there looking for different people … what we didn’t want to do was miss the best available person once we’d made the decision to move forward.”
March said Miller had been forced to be a “jack-of-all-trades” during his time at the Tigers but, while still a “great football person” did not fit the particular skill set Richmond was looking for to fill its current role.
He said the Tigers, while not having short-listed any candidates, might be after a more “contemporary” person to fill the role.
Asked if his Richmond board had been embarrassed with the way Miller’s departure had been made public, March said it “wasn’t ideal”.
“In an ideal world I would have sat down with Greg and we would have discussed it and worked on his departure,” March said.
“I’m disappointed it came out that way and I expressed that disappointment to Greg when I met with him yesterday.
“I’ll deal with that over the coming weeks [but] we haven’t had a leak in this organisation in the three years that I’ve been there and I’m disappointed that we’ve had one in this case.”
The club president said he spoke to Miller on Friday night but didn’t inform him of his sacking until across the weekend – despite reports to the contrary.
“[I spoke to him and said] I wanted to meet with him face-to-face to discuss the review and we needed to do that and could we do that over the weekend and that was the basis [of it],” March said.
“I definitely did not tell him he was sacked on Friday night.”
March also refuted suggestions Miller’s reputation had been tarnished across the weekend when the respected clubman went to ground after the story of his sacking first emerged.
Instead, he praised Miller and said he had acted “admirably”, refusing to show any “angst” towards his club despite feeling his days in his job may have been over.
March said speculation about assistant coaches in recent days – citing Jade Rawlings – had been “appalling”.
He made it clear that while his board carries out a review of the football department annually, positions such as assistant coaches are assessed by a football sub-committee.
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