Tiger Balme just the remedy
Patrick Smith | April 23, 2009
THE Richmond Football Club could not be more shambolic if it hired Humphrey B. Bear as runner.
The declaration on Tuesday night that Terry Wallace's fate would be decided mid-season after an internal review of all things football only underlines what everyone knows.
The club has no idea how it got itself into this chaotic position and has absolutely no idea how to get out of it. Callous opposition clubs laugh at Richmond, the more sensitive just shake their heads in disbelief.
The grip on reality at Punt Rd is hardly strengthened when cheerleaders in the media write that the Gary March-led board has nothing to feel awkward or disappointed about. That a senior AFL official has felt compelled to offer advice suggests that the governing body is worried - but ultimately powerless - to save Richmond from itself.
The declaration from the club's general manager of football, Craig Cameron, that mid-season would be the time to re-evaluate Wallace's 2009 tenure will signify 12 months of bumbling and fumbling by the board. For it is a year since Richmond announced that former captain Tony Free would join the board as football director and begin a review of all things footy. If a review of an AFL club's football operations takes 12 months, then you can draw just a couple of conclusions - the wrong men are doing the job or that the football department must be turfed from head to toe.
When Geelong chief executive Brian Cook launched a review of Geelong after a disappointing 2006 season, it took six weeks. By the end critics said it was laboured and drawn out. But Cook did interview more than 50 people. If it had a weakness it was that the amount of people privy to the review meant information got out prematurely.
Suspicions that at least one board member wanted to move on coach Mark Thompson hampered the process. Nonetheless, Thompson was reappointed, personnel swapped and changed. In 2007, Geelong was the dominant team in the competition and won the premiership.
That a football department could be examined all over, changed and tweaked in six weeks makes Richmond's year-long considerations an unnecessary and counterproductive waste of time and effort. But if you have no real idea where to start or finish, reviews can prove eternal.
Critical to Cook's review was the acknowledgement that successful clubs needed the best football operations managers because they could pull everything together, knead the disillusioned, soothe the outraged and silence the barking mad. So Cook went out and hired Neil Balme. Along with Cook and Thompson, Balme restored confidence. Made common sense the mantra that drove every decision. No one was indulged. No truths untold. Egos managed not massaged.
Balme came to the club well qualified. A champion player with Richmond, a premiership coach in South Australia, who then took Melbourne to a preliminary final in 1994. He joined Collingwood as football general manager and within four years the Magpies had played in two grand finals. In his initial year at Geelong, the Cats won their first flag since 1963, last year played again in the grand final and this year is favourite to win another premiership.
The best thing that March and his board can wish for is that Geelong wins the title in September. It would make the poaching of Balme a much simpler task. For Balme is the only man who can make something, anything, of the mess that is Richmond. If the Cats can win their two premierships in the three years Balme has been at the club, it will make it much easier for the club to release him from the last year of his contract. And it would be less difficult for Balme to leave Geelong before his official time was up because the footy manager is a most loyal employee. Helpful, too, is Geelong's history of releasing people who have the opportunity to move on to greater challenges. And there is no challenge as great as the one that confronts Richmond.
The acquisition of Balme must become the major priority because a strong and influential lobby group within the Richmond community wants him at Punt Rd for next season so he can oversee the remaking of the football department. The plan is that Balme take complete control of all things football - he would be asked to lead the search for a new coach, assess football department personnel, review recruiting and list management as well as all other sections of the club's engine room.
Balme has been informally approached to consider the position but was noncommittal given that he remains under contract to Geelong. But if he does accept the offer then he will have the full support of the very strong past-players lobby that is determined to see the fate of the Tigers placed in the hands of Richmond people.
What has been made certain this season by the actions of the present administration is that the position cannot be filled from within. As well, only the clubs with the shrewdest list and recruiting managers will prosper over the next three years as drafts are compromised to allow the 17th and 18th franchises to build strong teams immediately.
Whether March and his board are clever enough to get Balme to Richmond is another thing altogether, of course. It might be that before Balme can be secured, a new board and president must be in place. And that cannot be a bad thing.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25371939-7583,00.html
