AFL club CEOs join forces to plot future for football departments

[Sanctorum]

Following article by Mark Robinson - Herald Sun, published in today's Oz:

"A consortium of the AFL’s most experienced brains has been formed to conduct an unprecedented, comprehensive audit of club football departments.

Geelong’s Brian Cook, West Coast’s Trevor Nisbett, Brisbane’s Greg Swann, Gold Coast’s Mark Evans and Essendon’s Xavier Campbell have formed a chief executive taskforce to examine what football departments will look like after the global virus.

The football subcommittee is one of four sub-committees made up of club chief executives. The others are finance, membership/marketing and health.

It’s understood the idea was Campbell’s and it has been embraced by all club chief executives.

It is the first time all 18 club bosses have worked together for a common cause. The potential loss of more than $15m for each club this year, the slashing of football department spend by $3m and the possibility of reduced playing lists means costs will have to be reduced in clubland.

Last week, clubs either stood down or made redundant 80 per cent of their staff.

The veteran CEOs are examining every aspect of finance and personnel. Their findings will be sent to all other club CEOs for further ideas and consideration before a report will be tabled with the AFL’s head of football, Steve Hocking, in the coming weeks.

“Our role, the taskforce or working group, is simply to prepare a paper of discussion points which all CEOs can talk about,’’ Cook said. “We are really into a brainstorming stage, where hopefully we talk about the options.’’

The sub-committee is looking at the worth of, for example:

• Specialised roles such as data, GPS and opposition analysts, and dietary staff;
• How many coaches, development staff and physios are required if there are no reserves teams and lists are cut to 35;
• Is Leading Teams still a requirement, and Champion Data, and if yes, then how much is necessary?
• What about recruiting departments? Do you need part-time and not full-time recruiters to support the list manager?

While most areas will be cut back, player welfare, which was already a hot-bed issue, is set to have more resources ploughed into it, while there is a general belief the medical department needs to remain strong.

The committee has had one phone hook-up and the members have since corresponded via email, while all 18 chief executives are in a WhatsApp group.

Cook, who has been Geelong’s chief executive since 1999, said the CEOs have been constantly talking in the past fortnight.

“There’s three or four committees and they’re around the major common issues we’re facing, which is about revenue protection, maintaining our football department connections and football department futures,’’ he said.

Cook said clubs were “all grappling’’ with how footy departments would be set up in the future.

“Is it a reduced version of what we’ve currently got or something completely different?’’ he said. “Is it about maintaining headcount and reducing hours or is it about reduction of salaries?

“We’re looking at all sorts of principles that the CEOs need to talk about, as well as the general managers of footy who have been meeting regularly, and the CFOs.

“It’s non-binding among the clubs; it’s basically here’s the template, let’s talk about the future.”

This article should be read in conjunction with the announcement by the AFL that they have negotiated a $600 million "line of credit" from NAB and ANZ to secure the future of the 18 team competition, which should put an end to speculation by posters on this forum that St Kilda (as well as GWS and Gold Coast Suns) are going to be cut from the competition, which was sheer nonsense.

On the other hand, there is little doubt that there will be massive changes to the way the competition, including footy operates in 2021, and that's probably not a bad thing!

The AFL Commission deserves great praise for safeguarding the game in a way that no other football code in Australia has managed to do: the NRL and ARU are going to have a massive struggle to retain any semblance of their pre-COVID-19 competitions.

[saintspremiers]

Wouldn’t they do a Zoom meeting rather than phone hookup?

[wally]

Yep they'll all agree to cut back the poor clubs like us will have to, then the rich clubs will broaden the gap once more.