Lloyd wrong to point finger at Tiger presidentBeverley O'Connor
Herald-Sun
May 29, 2014 THE Tigers may need some tough love but what they don’t need is a blabbermouth president.
In admitting that his teammates have asked him for a more aggressive leadership style, captain Trent Cotchin continued to feed one of the year’s great debates: what has gone wrong at Tigerland?
Mind you, he did it from the vantage point of Richmond’s 113-point smashing of Greater Western Sydney. And there’s nothing better than a thumping win to silence your critics. And no one did it more emphatically than Jack Riewoldt.
His bizarre antics during the week were quickly forgotten after he kicked a career-best 11.2.
He had to make amends for clumsily analysing his beleaguered coach Damien Hardwick’s game plan.
Someone else who may need to make amends is former Essendon great Matthew Lloyd.
Now, I’m a big fan of Lloyd’s — he’s developed into a confident, assured commentator.
But his comments about Richmond president Peggy O’Neal were ill-timed and ill-thought-out.
He started something of a sideline frenzy, carried on by others, questioning why the recently appointed Tiger chief wasn’t getting out there explaining herself and the club, and reassuring anxious fans that all was well when it clearly wasn’t. But he went further.
“What does she bring to the table that makes her a great president?’’ he asked.
Before posing a question like that, he should have done his homework.
While she’s been in the job for only eight months, her credentials have been well documented and, really, they’re not all that different from many other presidents before her.
Significant legal, corporate and board experience with several years on the Richmond board under her belt.
And, as she herself pointed out while batting away the obvious implication that the only reason the question was posed was because she was a woman, it was a question that insulted the rest of the directors around the table who had demonstrated their faith in electing her.
And I can hardly imagine it would have been asked of a newly installed male who had also chosen to take a measured approach to the media feeding frenzy. In fact, I can think of many over the years who preferred not to make the game about themselves and provide a running commentary at every turn. David Smorgon at the Doggies, stuff Costa at the Cats.
Larger-than-life, highly vocal presidents can be a godsend for a club ... but they have their downside too. Charismatic presidents like Eddie McGuire and Jeff Kennett can become the story themselves and a distraction for the players and club executives.
McGuire’s unfortunate comments about Adam Goodes were raised again just this week, months after the furore, when former Pies coach Mick Malthouse took a veiled swipe at the way that incident was handled by the AFL community.
When Kennett was in charge at Hawthorn, the club was forever putting out spot fires because he was prone to planting his foot firmly in his mouth, something that became a source of running tension between the president and coach Alistair Clarkson.
Not the least of those incidents was the “Kennett Curse”, when he declared the Cats didn’t have the mental toughness to beat the Hawks. It took five years to shake off!
Some of the most effective presidents have been quiet achievers and it’s perfectly reasonable for Peggy O’Neal to fashion herself on that model.
WHEN she did speak in a measured, calm interview on radio she provided some reassurance for fans and rejected any knee-jerk reaction like sacking the coach a few months into an extended contract.
“One of the things that good clubs do is they remain stable, they continue to question themselves, but if you’re always looking to make drastic changes, you’re always starting over ... you don’t build great teams by starting over all the time,” she told SEN.
And CEO Brendon Gale was also at pains to point out that it was the football department that had to provide answers to the perplexing form slump, not the president.
And it’s not that O’Neal and the rest of the board are ignoring the signs and football boss Dan Richardson has been charged with the job of finding answers. That’s what good governance boards do: they don’t meddle where they don’t have real expertise.
That’s not to say that things didn’t run off the rails last week ahead of the emphatic statement the players themselves finally made on the ground.
Airing your dirty laundry can be counter-productive and, as Riewoldt ably demonstrated, only adds weight to the fears that something is going badly wrong. Pulling closely together and internally going through the rigorous process of asking the right questions will always yield the better outcome.
http://www.news.com.au/national/lloyd-wrong-to-point-finger-at-tiger-president/story-e6frfkp9-1226934955631
