I couldn’t agree more. A good board sets the culture of the club. I’m old enough to remember the impact Allen Aylett and his new board had on the culture of NMFC, allowing for a decade of success. It wasn’t until EFC started getting the Greg Sewells, David Shaws and Ron Evans in that the basis of the success of the Sheedy era was laid. It could be argued that Richmond was a mediocre club for so long because they had truly awful boards. I think our current board is still in post saga recovery mode. Lindsay may have been the chairman to bring stability to the club, but times have moved on. Time for some board members who care for more than the bottom line $$. Anyway thats my two penneth worth.
Meh
2 Likes
Accept mediocrity. Tick
Make the eight. Tick
Keep AFL house onside. Tick
Did’nt upset players. Tick
Didn’t upset umpires. Tick
Full club review complete. Every body enjoy the summer and we’ll see you back here next season for more of the same.
9 Likes
The only good review is an independent external review. Otherwise it’s no better than the police investigating themselves. You just end up with an outcome that best suits your own conscious or unconscious biases.
He was an external guy brought in to review the footy department.
Worked fine at Richmond.
1 Like
I would like to know what does the Essendon Football Club stand for in 2020.
Are we a business that operates a Football Team as an aside?
Is Membership Numbers more important than Premiership numbers?
I as an old time player (U/19s - Ressies), born and bred in Moonee Ponds, Member forever - LIKE THE WHOLE OF MY FAMILY - have no idea of what this joint is all about anymore.
They got rid of Sheeds to get Knights - worked well eh? Then knifed Knighta for Hird. What a brilliant time that was. Then he goes and we get Woosha. He would be hopeless at chess as it requires moves.
So we seem to think that 8th is a good year. Fanta thinks so. Probably having a Team meeting to discuss stupid haircuts and which vital player can p1ss off mid season for a wedding in 2020.
Our number one player doesn’t play for 2 years because of incompetence in the Sports “Science” Department that makes Quinn look great. Crow? More Nepotism.
Now the wolves are howling that he is thinking of moving.
So having seen the 60’s, 80’s, 90’s and 2000’s (early) - even the 70’s we put in fiercely… WTF does this group stand for?
What does the Club I thought I knew and loved stand for?
At the moment, I can think of better things to do with my membership dollars.
SICK OF IT.
16 Likes
I mean external to AFL. There are huge successful sporting franchises all around the world. If you want to best you look at what the best are doing. How they approach things, how they go about recruiting, why they recruit certain players, how they go about training.
You don’t need to reinvent the wheel. People are already reinventing it.
Club has done that though after the Saga. They have checked out some of the biggest clubs in the world and how they go about it.
Did they? Didn’t do a very good job then. Must have only checked the marketing departments. Forgot about their core business.
3 Likes
I’m going to have my two bobs worth. The club always engages in corporate speak (as does the AFL). So let’s look at the club as a company.
-
EFC reminds me of a small mining stock that is always promising to make money next year but never does. The bottom line for a football club is premierships. That’s all that matters. The last 15 years we have made a loss every year. We haven’t even won a final. And we keep carrying forward the losses.
-
The supporters/members are like retail investors. We’re stuck with our shares because our parents were supporters, in other cases like me because we started barracking when we were kids. We can’t sell our shares and we don’t have voting rights, at least on the stuff that matters. Yet the principals of the firm and employees can move on.
-
If EFC were trading on the stock exchange, the share price would be lower now than in 2001, when our main competitors (e.g. Hawthorn, Collingwood, Richmond, Eagles, Geelong, Sydney) share price have doubled. After Thursday night which represented another significant write down, our share price probably fell another 20%.
-
When the corporate regulator had a go at us in 2013-16 when every other club was doing the same thing, we became the fall guy. We didn’t stand up just like we don’t stand up on the field.
Yesterday I spoke to a supporter. I asked her whether she watched the game. She said she watched the first quarter but after quarter time it became too much for her and her son. They turned it off. How many other supporters turned off before the end. We have to get a culture of winning back.
So what is to be done. Like every company we have to become ruthless to compete. We have to change our culture. It starts at the top.
24 Likes
Yes. Good analogy.
If we were a company there would be pressure on the chairman to resign and the board to sack the CEO.
And the COO of the core business would also get a hurry up.
1 Like
No disrespect to anyone but I totally disagree with this argument. Firstly, if we were a company we’d be doing pretty well… profitable…shares at an all time high.
I’ve said this before, I strongly believe our biggest problem is that we ARE run like a business. We need to get right back to basics, build a winning culture, an all of club culture where winning games of football is the only KPI.
We are a FOOTBALL CLUB, we need to stop patting ourselves in the back for average performance. Every resource should be focused on winning games of football, on building a culture where that is the only outcome that is celebrated.
3 Likes
What argument, we are all agreeing on that?
Hang on a bit of a difference Where is our divided in the mail I suppose
I just assume the business people are worrying about business and the footy people are worrying about footy.
2 Likes
Collingwood and Hawthorn are also run like a business.
The key difference to me is that they understand what their core product is better than EFC. I do not know one supporter who actually cares that their Club is profitable, and I do not know one supporter who does not care if the club wins footy games.
Hawthorn and Collingwood Supporters know that the core principle is to win games; both Clarkson and Buckley, and both Kennett and McGuire are emotional about wins and take it very personally. Club Supporters identify with them and love them as a consequence.
While I do admire Lindsay Tanner; he is about emotional as my first Wife, and Woosha is as rocklike as my first Mother-in-Law. We all loved Sheeds passion and fire and it infected the Team.
I am happy that EFC is profitable, has paid done it’s debt and has great facilities. I would trade it all for a flag. Hawthorn and Collingwood, Geelong and Richmond show you can have both.
11 Likes
[quote=“Jefferson, post:43, topic:16803, full:true”]
Not sure if anyone else has listened to the recent ‘Sacked’ podcasts, but Choco Williams & Spud Frawley (yes, I know) have both talked about their own experiences in terms of applying for the head coach role and selecting Bomber. There seems to be a prevailing issue within the club (as evidenced pre and during saga) that a review may not be able to fix.
[/quote]
Did they expand on what this ISSUE is? or do they just talk for the sake of of talking on a podcast.
1 Like
matthew lloyd pretty much spot on here
17 Likes
I know a few Fitzroy supporters that wished their club was profitable.