Peggy O'Neal To Step Down at end of 2022

[RoarEmotion]

I spent a good chunk of the last 10 years volunteering as a phone operator for lifeline. Call after call after call was from people on the verge of suicide because of the damage pokies did in their lives. You got to know when government pay days were because of the spike in calls.

I'd give back the flags in a second. If I think about it too long it takes away the enjoyment of them anyway.

Football is just a game and not that important in the scheme of things, especially when you compare it to people jumping in front of trains or children going without food or losing their parents.

I also don't accept the argument that there some sort of mitigation because if we sell the licence someone else will use them. Yes, ideally you would scrap the licences and take the loss but you also don't keep selling heroin because if you stopped someone else would take over your corner.

Fair enough and thanks for sharing. With your life experience makes perfect sense why you feel that way. These will be statistics / numbers to many people and not invoke the same emotional connection you have which sounds quite traumatic.

Personally I thibk linking Richmond owning pokies as being the root cause of these outcomes is false - it’s just illogical. So if we got rid of them the same people would still be on lifeline.

Having a view that Richmond shouldn’t own something that causes harm I’m 100% on board with but doesn’t taint the presidency for me. I do hope we have been trying to work something behind the scenes and we just haven’t got fair value yet or have some legal issue delaying it - if we hadn’t done that I’d be leaning more to the taint view. From a business point of view if we say we don’t want them it potentially puts us in a very poor negotiating position.

 

[St Kevin]

Legacy forever tainted in my eyes by the failure to act on pokies, some things are more important than football.

Oh and I think she was misquoted in there. 'We have term limits' should surely have been followed by 'when it suits us'.

By that logic, the entire league is tainted due to its reliance on gambling advertising.

 

[Willo]

By that logic, the entire league is tainted due to its reliance on gambling advertising.

And that includes any who get paid by clubs or the afl