Essendon had lost faith in the appointment of their new CEO Andrew Thorburn as soon as they woke up on Tuesday and realised he was chair of a church whose pastor espoused controversial views relating to abortion and homosexuality in two sermons in 2013.
Those views were in complete contradiction to those held by the club from Windy Hill, which promotes inclusivity and diversity, an organisation where everyone is welcome and respected.
Andrew Thorburn in 2019 in his then role as chief executive of the National Australia Bank.Credit:Arsineh Houspian
Thorburn was in meetings immediately with the club president, David Barham, who had announced the appointment in celebratory fashion a day earlier.
Thorburn maintained he wasn’t aware of the controversial sermons that remained accessible online. But it soon became clear that a royal commission was not required to decide Thorburn could not retain both his job at the Bombers and his position with the City on the Hill church.
Although Thorburn wavered at one point, he decided he was not prepared to give up his position with the faith-based organisation to stay at the Bombers, so he resigned as Essendon CEO.
That’s fair enough.
Football prides itself on being a broad church with plenty of work being done to make the game more diverse in their views.
What is unfathomable is how the Bombers could have made this appointment – of a person originally brought in to lead a whole-of-club review, who had been criticised in the banking royal commission during his time with NAB – without doing an exhaustive check on his background.
It would have been against the law to ask him directly about his religious views during the interview process. But risk management demands exhaustive checks before a person is appointed to such a public role. Particularly at a club whose governance failings and appointment processes caused so much agony less than 10 years ago and that treated former senior coach Ben Rutten terribly when it made a desperate, late bid to secure Alastair Clarkson as coach.
In the statement announcing Thorburn’s appointment supporters were told the “process to find our next CEO was comprehensive and led by [Ernst & Young], with the support of club director Dorothy Hisgrove”.
Perhaps a review of that process could become part of the club-wide review that remains ongoing – a review that was originally being led by Thorburn.
Add this to the debacle of having a club board member, Kevin Sheedy, publicly state he would have preferred James Hird as coach rather than the newly appointed Brad Scott, just hours after that announcement was made, having been a dissenting voice in the 6-1 endorsement of the independent panel’s recommendation that Scott was the best man for the job.
And to think this is the board that questioned Rutten’s game plan. The hide of them to do so.
It must be hard for Essendon supporters to be angry any more.
They have almost become sad, those who acknowledge that the club’s devotion to false idols is a barrier to success tearing their hair out at the latest drama in what Barham calls “a couple of missteps”.
Now they need to find a CEO. It’s not that hard, surely. Someone who knows football, a person who can steer a ship where 80 per cent of the revenue is virtually guaranteed, as long as they don’t stuff it up.
