WHO WAS WINNING THE RACE AND HOW DO THE CANDIDATES LOOK?Scott Gullan
HeraldSun
22 April 2023A female legacy piece was Richard Goyder’s back-up plan which blew up in smoke spectacularly over last weekend’s Gather Round.
In his other roles as chairman of Woodside Petroleum and Qantas Airways, Goyder has actively promoted women and the thought of being the one to install the first female AFL CEO appealed.
Woodside’s chief executive is Meg O’Neill while two of the leading candidates to replace Alan Joyce at Qantas later this year are Qantas Loyalty chief executive Olivia Wirth and the airline’s chief financial officer Vanessa Hudson.
Goyder’s anointed ground-breaker in the AFL was the highly regarded and well-credentialed Kylie Watson-Wheeler, the Western Bulldogs president and CEO of the Walt Disney Company Australian and New Zealand arm.
Her name had been thrown up at the start of the search with a dozen others but the trail went cold as the focus turned elsewhere before she suddenly emerged last week as the chairman’s chosen one.
The AFL engaged New York based recruitment company Spencer Stuart and have paid them over $1 million to run the worldwide search to find McLachlan’s replacement.
First interviews happened in June last year with candidates sounded out including club chief executives Brendon Gale (Richmond), Tom Harley (Sydney), David Matthews (GWS Giants) and Simon Garlick (Fremantle).
The in-house candidates were the AFL’s General Counsel and General Manager Football Operations Andrew Dillon, Travis Auld (GM Finance, Clubs and Broadcast) and Kylie Rogers (GM Customer and Commercial).
Then for nine months nothing happened. The search ground to a halt for reasons no-one has explained.
Behind-the-scenes opinions were being sought from club presidents and other industry figures although the Herald Sun understands that neither the recruitment firm, nor Goyder, sought out Demetriou for his take which shocked many.
“It’s hard to believe Andrew Demetriou didn’t get a phone call, you’d think he would know what is required to be the CEO of the AFL,” an industry source said.
It wasn’t until March that a short list of candidates were summoned to Spencer Stuart’s Melbourne office at 101 Collins St.
By this stage Dillon was considered the front-runner from Gale before Goyder fell in love with Watson-Wheeler’s business nous which included which including being a senior executive at the Hallmark greeting cards business in the US.
The lack of excitement around Gale has been the biggest surprise of the process. There is a sense he was never “really in it” with his relationship with McLachlan and Goyder a sticking point.
“Brendon Gale came second in the process in 2014, one in which Gillon McLachlan was a shoe-in and the anointed one,” a club boss observed this week.
“Since 2014 he has won three premierships, got 100,000 members, put $20 million in the bank and set up external businesses for the Richmond Football Club yet he didn’t make the top two.
“And don’t forget he’s a lawyer, played 250 games and was president of the Players’ Association. I mean how is Kylie Watson-Wheeler ahead of Brendon Gale?”
When the Herald Sun exclusively revealed that Watson-Wheeler had cancelled a speaking engagement in Melbourne last week to be a late addition to the AFL’s lavish Gather Round dinner at the prestigious Magill Estate winery in South Australia, she was quickly wound into favourite.
But Goyder’s plan hit a snag at the Commission table where it’s believed he was rolled by a vote of 4-3 to make Watson-Wheeler the new CEO.
If the clubs were frustrated before, they left Adelaide steaming, particularly after McLachlan engineered a three-year deal, worth around $60 million, for Gather Round to remain in Adelaide.
That was a decision many believed should have been one for the incoming CEO, not the one who was allegedly in his final days.
Watson-Wheeler left the City of Churches embarrassed and flew overseas on a holiday with her children. She never wanted her name to come out given her Disney commitments and like the assistant coach who keeps missing out on the senior job, it’s not a great look.
With Auld linked to the vacant Australian Grand Prix gig, the sense by the end of the highly successful football feast in Adelaide was that it was back to Dillon even though Goyder had apparently been concerned he didn’t want it enough.
The reason the clubs love Dillon is his no-fuss personality, he’s very good at his job and does it without the fanfare which clearly the AFL chair would like to see more of.
If it does fall Dillon’s way – he has been at the AFL for 22 years – how must he be feeling?
He has been in front of the Commission’s eyes the whole time and they’ve spent most of the past 12 months trying to find reasons not to appoint him.
“They have humiliated the candidates,” one experienced AFL figure said. “How does anyone go into the job feeling they have got a really solid imprimatur to be able to create the change they want to create with this environment of uncertainty which has been created by an inept Commission.
“At the end of it all they will appoint Andrew Dillon, they could have picked him out five years ago and prepared him. So much for needing time for the worldwide search, they’ll go with the man who has been in their backyard the whole time.
“Seriously, we are getting laughed at.”
https://www.codesports.com.au/afl/inside-the-afls-ceo-search-farce-what-has-happened-since-gillon-mclachlan-announced-his-departure-from-the-top-job/news-story/8b74f239d6eb189fd854096428be5a81
