By Caroline Wilson
The Richmond Football Club board will sit firmly at the crossroads on Tuesday night when it gathers to plot its future beyond Brendon Gale.
President John O’Rourke says he is not daunted by the responsibility he faces, even though the difference between the correct leadership decision and a misstep is sustained success or another journey into the wilderness for the Tigers, who sit second-last on the ladder with one win, only ahead of North Melbourne.
Big job: Richmond president John O’Rourke.Credit: Joe Armao
Nor does he give any credence to suggestions that Gale, who will steer the AFL’s 19th team Tasmania into the competition in 2028, should leave now and that in even some subtle way has already mentally checked out of Tigerland.
While O’Rourke said Gale would no longer play a role in strategic talks or long-term planning apart from the Punt Road redevelopment, the Tigers’ president said his outgoing CEO had two key jobs to perform before he left. He did not rule out Gale departing sooner should his replacement from the plethora of candidates be chosen sooner than expected.
“We’ll be going back to the draft at the end of the year,” said O’Rourke, “and clearly there’ll be strategic decisions and planning Brendon won’t be part of. His role doesn’t need to include that.
“But he has two key deliverables … The smooth transition of leadership and the redevelopment project, which is a passion project for him and which we believe if things go well can start later this year.”
Outgoing Richmond CEO Brendon Gale.Credit: Getty Images
The Punt Road project stalled last year due to funding problems and remains Gale’s primary short-term focus.
The timing of Gale’s public resignation was largely dictated by Tasmania. That fledgling club’s chairman Grant O’Brien and his board targeted Gale more than a year ago and saw his early appointment as integral in their bid to bring the state behind the club and give it a face. O’Brien and O’Rourke agreed to as much in a conversation days before Gale’s announcement last week.
But Gale, contracted to Richmond until the end of this football year, has conceded that the prospect of running a club for a full three seasons before its senior men’s team joins the AFL will be a challenge for him after 15 years at the helm of Richmond. To leave even earlier, before coach Adem Yze has completed even half a season, would seem untenable for him.
“We never got to that discussion,” said O’Rourke. “But if I said it’s better that he go now he would have. To be clear, we want him to see out his contract. But we have got the most respect for Brendon as we possibly could have for a person who has served this club for 30 years. He’s exceptional. And he knows how the conflicts work.”
One external view is that Gale should leave immediately. Another is that he should have held off his resignation announcement until later in the season. And yet another is that he risks his own legacy should the Tigers’ dismal and injury-plagued year deliver the club’s first bottom-four finish since 2010 – Gale’s first year in the job.
“I think that would be an incredibly harsh judgment,” said O’Rourke. “It’s ridiculous to say he’s left us in a hole after 15 years of good work and coming from a low base.”
Under Gale’s stewardship, Richmond have not missed finals for two years running since 2012 – they are headed that way again this season – and have missed finals just three times in 12 years. But the Tigers of 2024 find themselves more generally compared with the Brisbane Lions and more recently Hawthorn post their three-peats.
That the pivotal figure of Gale has emerged as the lightning rod for Richmond’s spluttering season is fitting given his influence and leadership. Just as the ageing and struggling Dustin Martin has proved the same on-field, much to the disgust of the Martin camp and notably, his manager Ralph Carr.
Dustin Martin is nearing the end of his storied career at the Tigers.Credit: Getty Images
But with Martin nearing the end, Trent Cotchin and Jack Riewoldt retired and Damien Hardwick enjoying his new toys on the Gold Coast, the CEO’s resignation seemed like the final domino.
O’Rourke, who is nearing 10 years as a director but under the club’s new board regulations can remain at the helm for one further three-year term beyond 2025 should he choose to, faces a choice between an internal succession plan favoured by Gale pitched against a long list of high-profile contenders.
The recruitment firm Transearch International will run the process while Tuesday’s board meeting will establish a subcommittee and a timeline for the search. O’Rourke, and vice president and corporate executive Henriette Rothschild, along with at least one external selector, will take part.
The club’s chief marketing officer and long-time Gale lieutenant Simon Matthews – whose brother Dave has run the Giants since their inception – looms as the key but not the only internal candidate and Richmond have already gauged interest from within the AFL and across several clubs.
While O’Rourke said a football background was important, he has not ruled out seeking commercial candidates from outside the game. The other top sporting vacancy is at the Victoria Racing Club where Steve Rosich is soon to depart and where O’Rourke previously served as vice chairman.
“We’re going to take some time with this,” said O’Rourke, who, while insisting he was not daunted by the task, admitted the workload ahead for him had increased by some measure. “There’s no panic because the foundation Brendon has created is so good. The executive team in place and the 30 people we have in management roles who no one sees make me very confident about our future.”
The past three years since Gale signed his last three-year deal with the Tigers have been punctuated by a series of professional challenges. In 2022, the first year of the new contract, the club made a fresh assault on September only to narrowly fail at the first hurdle.
Gillon McLachlan announced his departure in April that year and Gale was a key contender favoured by the majority of clubs. But he, like all the short-listed candidates, was forced to endure a drawn-out process of more than a year indisposed by months of silence from the AFL.
‘It’s ridiculous to say he’s left us in a hole after 15 years of good work and coming from a low base.’
John O’Rourke on Brendon Gale
In 2023, initially buoyed by the recruitment of former Greater Western Sydney prime movers Jacob Hopper and Tim Taranto, coach Hardwick eyed another flag but quickly became frustrated by his team’s failure to deliver on their previous non-negotiables and eyed an opportunity on the Gold Coast.
He was gone by May, around the time Andrew Dillon became AFL CEO-elect. While Gale remained steadfast in his faith in Tigers football bosses Blair Hartley and Tim Livingstone he must have wondered whether he had been distracted by the AFL role.
Dillon approached Gale to take the top football job at head office but was unable to deliver a role impressive enough to counter the prospect of a consolation prize. And although O’Rourke knew he would probably lose his CEO by the end of this year he convinced Gale to steer clear of the AFL job under Dillon.
The view of the Tigers’ president was that Gale was a leader and should resist any job without the title chief executive attached to it. And so it transpired.
Despite Richmond’s predicament and the clear hole that Gale will leave behind I’m choosing to keep the faith with the club’s board and the culture the departing CEO has created.
The Tigers’ new leadership will take charge at a time the AFL is looking certain to regenerate Next Generation academies and football soft caps – two strategies, particularly the club’s multicultural and Indigenous academy – crucial to Richmond’s success, which were cut back and stopped the club in its tracks.
O’Rourke would not be drawn on list management strategies, but it seems overkill to suggest the club has been immeasurably set back by the Taranto and Hopper (aged 26 and 27 respectively) deals given their age and the roles they will be in transitioning the club towards its next assault, just as Shaun Grigg, Ivan Maric and Bachar Houli did before them.
To compare Richmond with the Lions or Hawthorn is inaccurate given the ailing administrations at both those clubs after their third respective premierships. Alastair Clarkson lingered for six years beyond his last flag and when Leigh Matthews retired four seasons after his last grand final the club replaced him with the completely inexperienced Michael Voss.
And Gale? If anyone deserves to be trusted to deliver transformation in his final season then he does. Particularly given the unique state of the yet-to-be-established Tasmanian Devils.
If the beginnings of a new-look Tigerland can physically emerge in the twilight of his stewardship with the symbolic turning of the first soil of the new development then why shouldn’t Gale be allowed to hold the spade?
Keep up to date with the best AFL coverage in the country. Sign up for the Real Footy newsletter.
