Gillon McLachlan first announced that he would be exiting the AFL back before Easter this year. As Christmas beckons, McLachlan remains chief executive and the country’s most powerful sporting body has been unable to nominate his successor.
In what should be viewed as an embarrassing turn of events, McLachlan has been asked by the AFL commission to stay on in his role until late April or May of next year, in effect giving McLachlan a farewell tour of sorts.
AFL chief executive Gillon McLachlan.Credit:Getty Images
It is remarkable that a body with the corporate and political might of the AFL has found McLachlan so difficult to replace, that the people charged with the governance of the sport are so reluctant to let him leave.
Some critical AFL industry insiders have noted that if the league was an ASX-listed company, shareholders would be wondering what the hell is going on, why this process has been so drawn out and, indeed, why McLachlan’s continued presence in the driver’s seat has been deemed so necessary by the AFL commission.
Why is McLachlan staying on?
The line from within the AFL is that McLachlan feels he must stay on, in part, to deal with the Hawthorn racism investigation. In doing so, he would bequeath his successor a less bumpy runway. So, it is being spun as a sacrificial act.
At AFL headquarters, the precedent of Andrew Demetriou hanging around for the Essendon crisis during 2013, when the then AFL CEO had intended to leave earlier, has been used as a defence of McLachlan’s extension.
That comparison or precedent is flawed on a number of fronts.
The most salient is that Demetriou, whatever his failings, did have a clear-cut successor identified (McLachlan), whom everyone within the AFL knew would take the reins as soon as he left. McLachlan has not groomed a specific successor, either within the AFL executive or even at club level. Nor has Richard Goyder, his chairman.
Further, the Essendon crisis dragged on into a four-year saga. McLachlan, as fate had it, was in the seat from 2014 when the crisis escalated into show cause notices, federal court cases and ultimately suspensions for the 34 players.
Presently, the AFL cannot say with any confidence a) what will come of this Hawthorn investigation, or b) how long it will be a significant issue for the competition and individuals such as the First Nations players and their partners and the relevant officials, headed by Alastair Clarkson, who is strenuously denying the allegations levelled against him.
Andrew Demetriou had identified Gillon McLachlan as his successor.Credit:Jesse Marlow
It might fizzle out into something less vexing, as lawyers brandish their briefs and settlements are reached. Or it might turn into a legal and logistical quagmire.
Whatever happens, there is no need for McLachlan to hang around for Hawthorn’s sake. The Hawthorn probe, in any case, will be handled directly by Andrew Dillon, the AFL’s legal counsel and senior executive who is one of the favourites – if not the topweight – to take Gillon’s gig.
The third key difference between Demetriou/Essendon and McLachlan/Hawthorn is that Demetriou’s chairman Mike Fitzpatrick was a more forceful figure, in terms of keeping the CEO on a leash, than the current chairman Goyder.
The impression given has been that Goyder is in thrall to Gillon, in the same way that Goyder, the Qantas chairman, has extolled Alan Joyce as a CEO nonpareil. He has let McLachlan run the show with minimal push back.
AFL chairman Richard Goyder.Credit:Louie Douvis
Unfortunately, this adoration of McLachlan – yes, a highly effective CEO on key measures such as COVID-19, government relations, sponsorship, club equalisation, broadcast deal, AFLW; less so on cultural matters – is also casting a shadow on his successor, whether that is Dillon, fellow AFL senior executive Travis Auld, Richmond CEO Brendon Gale or another left-field choice.
The notion that McLachlan is needed to remain in the job to deal with various tasks – the players’ CBA, club funding, the Tasmanian licence and the Hawthorn investigation – necessarily means removing important decisions from the next CEO’s domain.
And, within the AFL, there’s perpetually a crisis of one kind or another. The next CEO will be confronted with a fresh disaster soon enough.
Goyder’s commission, meanwhile, is still running two short – three if you count the temporary leave of Andrew Newbold, the ex-Hawthorn president (who has stepped aside, as a matter of governance, for the Hawthorn probe). Jason Ball, the ex-Swans premiership player, and ex-News Corp CEO Kim Williams have been gone from the AFL board for almost two years.
Ball’s exit left the commission without a single serious ex-football person in its ranks, further consolidating the power of the AFL executive. If the AFL was a listed company, the shareholders might ask why there are no replacements for those directors. But the clubs, on the whole, have been supine.
In part, this is a legacy of McLachlan and Demetriou before him. At least half of the clubs rely on the AFL for financial support and few are willing to take on head office in anything other than the most performative way.
The AFL Commission has employed headhunters from the US to find McLachlan’s replacement and one wonders what they’ve got for their money. One leading candidate was interviewed by the headhunters in June and has not had a second interview yet.
The game needs a new leader in place by February. If and when that decision is belatedly reached, McLachlan should move on soon afterwards, removing the shadow on his successor that the Sun King has cast.
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