Gillon McLachlan’s first official task in 2014 when he took over as AFL chief executive was to pay a visit to the languishing Brisbane Lions, where he ultimately brought in the popular and experienced Greg Swann as chief executive.
As significant as that has proven to be it didn’t come close to McLachlan’s first unofficial move, which took place six weeks earlier when, as CEO elect, he travelled to Tasmania to oversee the AFL’s takeover of the state’s governing football body.
Tasmanian Premier Jeremy Rockliff and AFL CEO Gillon McLachlan at the announcement of the new team.Credit: AFL PHotos
In an interview with Hobart’s The Mercury, McLachlan said: “We have an ideal model, which is a single team representing Tasmania. Who that is and what format that takes is a complex question.″
Just as Andrew Dillon raised McLachlan’s eyebrows on Monday when he declared his preference for a 2.30 grand final almost immediately after being announced as new AFL boss – and before the commission had met to debate that issue – McLachlan’s Tasmanian one-team model comments came as a complete surprise to the competition.
Hawthorn bosses, fearing for their bottom line, were furious. North Melbourne, in the early stages of their Hobart deal, were not happy and the mayor of Launceston Albert van Zetten made his disgust with McLachlan blatantly clear at Hawthorn’s next York Park home game.
Outgoing CEO Andrew Demetriou warned McLachlan that this was not a battle he should pick so early in his tenure. Tasmania, according to Demetriou, was a political minefield. Too hard to win.
Having criticised McLachlan for lingering too long upon his victory lap it must be said now that Tasmania’s AFL licence, a task he was determined to complete and announce, has proved his greatest achievement.
There is a list of difficult jobs and issues that have deserved greater efforts from head office over the past six to nine months, but none of those should overshadow this week the social, political and sporting momentum Australia’s smallest and perhaps most beautiful state will achieve by fielding its own AFL team.
That the game’s governors abandoned Tasmania for far too long for the wrong reasons and allowed football to fester under their watch only made that task more difficult as the years progressed. Particularly as one AFL club grew richer and more successful, largely due to the state, but failed to contribute much in turn. There have been so many missteps along the way.
But as the tide quickly turns to dissent over the stadium, financial priorities, the so-called three-way divide – an internal battle that long proved a convenient excuse for head office – and the challenge of luring players and the best personnel to run the club, the game’s history should record that McLachlan oversaw in the end the righting of a great wrong.
He is by no means the only hero of this story but having run the competition for the past nine years he deserves significant credit for putting the game in the position it now is to have achieved a deal he described to this masthead as “bulletproof”.
“In the end it was the scrutiny and the pressure we weathered from the club presidents that will make this new club successful,” said McLachlan. “They held us to account and insisted on a model which means that the deal has been done in a way that it can’t be beaten.″
‘In the long run the Tasmanian deals with Hawthorn and North Melbourne were very good for those clubs, but they weren’t good for Tasmania.’
Gillon McLachlan
McLachlan says now that Tasmania never got a look in when Gold Coast and Greater Western Sydney were introduced because “the strategic upside wasn’t there. [But] coming into the role as CEO and looking at the vision that I pitched for the game to be truly national and truly representative it was clear Tasmania had become an outlier.
“It might not have been a strategic play in the normal sense, but it was core to our vision that every Australian in every part of Australia had to be a part of and play a role in our game. The game wasn’t growing here like it was in the rest of the country because it wasn’t truly represented.
“In the long run the Tasmanian deals with Hawthorn and North Melbourne were very good for those clubs, but they weren’t good for Tasmania.”
Of the recent turning points for Tasmania, McLachlan cited the 2017 function hosted by the Tasmanian Football Foundation at Crown in Melbourne – one of the more emotional off-field nights the game has witnessed where Tasmanian greats implored the AFL to do the right thing. Chris Fagan said that night that the game would not be complete until Tasmania had its own team. Another driving force was former premier Peter Gutwein, the first Tasmanian premier to meet the AFL halfway in terms of funding.
History beckons for football in the Apple Isle.Credit: AFL Photos
That 2017 function was put together by the Hobart-born James Henderson, executive chairman of Dynamic Sports and Entertainment Group – whose famous list of clients includes Fagan – who went on to establish the Tasmanian Task Force. McLachlan said it was Henderson’s connections and groundwork, which included the appointment of chairman and Virgin Australia co-founder Brett Godfrey to the Task Force, that had moved the proposal closer to reality as it drove the public campaign.
Describing Godfrey as a “blunt instrument”, McLachlan said the Task Force had only played a backseat role over the past six months as state and federal governments wanted to deal directly with the AFL.
He admitted he had his doubts about the 19th licence when COVID hit just as the deal with the government was becoming a reality and later when Gutwein resigned as premier, but that the strategy by then was too compelling and the downside for football in Tasmania too dire.
McLachlan can step away from the AFL justifiably proud of this achievement. There is every chance he will leave earlier than the start of October and in his words Dillon’s greatest challenge will be to work with the clubs to grant the new team list concessions that ensure it is successful from day one.
He said the only reason an AFLW licence was not granted this week was because a Tasmanian women’s team might enter the competition earlier – potentially by 2026.
The club members, said McLachlan, would come naturally. As natural as the yet-to-be finalised name for the new club, which McLachlan said must be the Devils. He said that the lessons of recent history showed that the Devils’ first coach should boast significant senior experience. “And they shouldn’t change one single thing about that brilliant Tasmanian footy jumper,” he said.
McLachlan will now take a back seat to his successor Dillon, a popular choice across the competition even though many club chiefs feel some discomfort over the handling of the executive search and in particular the shoddy treatment of another respected candidate Brendon Gale, a Tasmanian native who McLachlan said had always championed the cause.
It was Gale who famously asked at a CEOs meeting some years ago when asked about the prospect of a Tasmanian team being viable: “Are we the keeper of the code or the keeper of the dollar?″
It is a credit to the work of McLachlan and this historic new licence that he can now claim to have been the keeper of both.
WHEN THE ‘WHEELS FELL OFF’ IN WESTERN SYDNEY
Greater Western Sydney chairman Tony Shepherd has voiced his disenchantment with the AFL, saying competition bosses had failed to adequately support the code’s alarming plight in western Sydney after “the wheels fell off during COVID”.
A week after Swans chairman Andrew Pridham’s assertion that the game was “going backwards in New South Wales”, Shepherd said the AFL needed to act urgently to address the crisis enfolding the game in Sydney’s west. His chief executive Dave Matthews last week said the NRL was bigger in Sydney than when the Giants started.
Shepherd said the AFL had fewer than 2000 registered players in a growing population of more than 2.65 million across western Sydney – “nearly five times the size of Tasmania”.
“The AFL have a big challenge and an even bigger opportunity in western Sydney.” He said the Giants had half the administration budget of other clubs.
“A good place to start would be to ensure AFL NSW have the necessary boots on the ground with local expertise and investment to support clubs, schools and families in western Sydney,” he said.
“The AFL Commission should have one of its meetings in western Sydney. They should all attend the derby in round 21 at Giants Stadium too. Other than the ever-supportive Gabby Trainor, I cannot recall the last time the commission visited the Giants.” Trainor was the sole commissioner at last week’s SCG derby. No AFL executive attended the game.
Shepherd, the Giants’ founding chairman who will step down at the end of the season, added: “When you’re going to war you need the best generals in the field … and this is a war we have been losing since 2020. We have gone backwards. In 2016, we might have played in a grand final if Callan Ward hadn’t been concussed and in 2019 we made the grand final.
“The wheels fell off in COVID. We had hubs in Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth and Queensland. The game did a great job, but not in Sydney’s west.” The Giants and the AFL have been involved in a power struggle over the new expansion hub to be based in Sydney’s west where initially GWS was concerned head office was trying to take over its marketing operation and staff.
Shepherd said his staunch defence of his chief executive Matthews may have frustrated the AFL and some commissioners who had spoken to the Giants chairman about Matthews’ occasionally combative style. “Dave has been our greatest champion. I spoke to my board about Dave, and he was unanimously supported. If that’s an issue with the AFL well …”
Shepherd said one Giants director said he would quit if Matthews left.
The outgoing chairman’s comments came as it has emerged that the AFL’s head office had last month moved to invest further millions into the Sydney problem and work more closely with disenchanted club bosses. However, it has also emerged that the league’s most senior game development boss, Rob Auld, had already moved two respected long-serving staffers from the game’s regional offices in NSW and Queensland.
In a move that blindsided the employees and bosses at AFL NSW and Queensland and surprised the four AFL clubs in those states, facilities and government managers Anthony Brooks and Cobey Moore were made redundant in April as part of the game’s “Towards 2030″ restructure.
Moore, who played a major role liaising with the Queensland government in the early days of the pandemic and with Brisbane’s new facility at Springfield, held talks with the Lions this week regarding a potential role with the club. AFL Queensland chairman Dean Warren learned of Moore’s removal just hours before Auld flew to Brisbane to break the news.
Shepherd said he had met Brooks, whom he held in high regard, this week. “I have no doubt he will have plenty of opportunities,” he said.
Auld defended his lack of consultation with AFL NSW and Queensland saying: “My responsibility is to respect the people directly involved in these decisions and to honour and ensure they are communicated with first. I don’t back away from that.″
He said of Brooks and Moore: “They are really good people. It’s hard when you make these decisions involving respected individuals as part of a wider restructure. I found it personally really tough.″
Auld said that head office would work more closely with club bosses in Sydney and said he had just established a NSW advisory group including Swans and Giants chiefs Tom Harley and Matthews and AFL NSW boss Tiffany Robertson. He said that on top of more than $2 million in AFL marketing funds, which would include a major new deal with News Limited to promote the game in Sydney, an AFL injection of a further $1.3 million a year for at least the next two years into football in the struggling state would be spent on game development.
He conceded the departure of Brooks and Moore had left the NSW and Queensland offices understaffed in the short term but that the AFL was already searching for new managers as part of a major restructure of the game’s facilities and government relations across Victoria, Tasmania, NSW, Queensland and the Northern Territory. He said the facilities and government relations portfolio would be widened to include second-tier competitions and elite talent, which would ultimately lead to five extra staffers placed across Australia. One of those would be placed in a new role in the ACT.
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