http://www.crikey.com.au/politics/2001/01/21-richmondagms.html
Bondy, board coups and lock-outs: Richmond AGMs
Stephen Mayne
Crikey Contributor
A Crikey reader has kindly sent in an account of various Richmond Football Club AGMs over the years as we prepare to attend our first RFC meeting on Jan 25. Come on down to Crown for the 8pm start and join in the action.
21 January 2001
Being dragged from the tennis at 5-5 in the first was not something we enjoyed - especially when the construction at Federation Square caused a massive traffic jam on the way to the Crown Palladium room for the 8pm start.
New President Clinton Casey gave a brief introduction to the board explaining the various committees they were on and then threw to Garry Cameron, the former Telstra finance director who is now managing director of the Grand Hotel Group which owns the Grand Hyatt in Melbourne.
Despite racking up a $600,000-plus loss for the year, this was explained by the dreadful injuries, higher than expected venue costs at Docklands where too many home games were scheduled and a $100,000 sponsorship shortfall.
When it came to questions on the financials no-one was prepared to ask any questions, including Crikey who could not find either his membership card or the financial accounts.
The director elections were the fastest Crikey has ever seen anywhere. Clinton Casey threw to Craig Winter from PriceWaterhouseCoopers who simply said: "I declare that Tony Jewell, Peter Welsh and Terry (Someone) were re-elected unopposed."
It appears that no-one actually got to vote and the boys were simply re-elected because no-one else stood against them. What if the members wanted to vote them down. There was absolutely no opportunity to do that or for any discussion.
With that out of the way, at 8.20pm President Casey threw to an inspirational video of tenacious Tiger players tackling hapless Geelong rivals to the backing of "What's my scene".
Danny Frawley then took the stage for precisely 16 minutes. Nine senior players walked up on stage for various awards followed by a similar number of shy looking kids who have been drafted or recruited from across the country.
Danny insisted that we only clap once they were all on stage and we were reassured when he told us that he'd "never seen a group work harder" in the pre-season.
He briefly went through the highs and lows of the season, openly conceding that "where we finished on the ladder was low enough".
But things are changing at Tigerland. Five new directors swept onto the board 14 months ago, Matthew Knights has been replaced as captain by Wayne Campbell who almost left the club a couple of years back. Cambo stood up briefly from the front row when introduced but apart from that kept a very low profile for the night. Danny has only been in the job for 12 months and has completely overhauled the coaching staff, but none of the new guard had any history with the club. This makes the recent appointment of former Best and Fairest winner Trevor Poole as Football Operations manager a reassuring thing for those of us that like to see a bit of loyalty around the place.
With all these injuries last year, it was good to hear Danny explain that "we have overhauled the conditioning staff" under the leadership of Dr Noel Duggan.
To wind up Danny's speech we got to see some video footage of the new recruits and the two Aboriginal lads - one called Andrew Krakour - certainly caught our eye. Inspirationally, the background music was the Bitter Sweet Symphony - if only there'd been some more sweetness over the past 20 years.
We then moved along to the awarding of three new life membership and this is where proceedings almost got emotional.
Club statistician Ian Williams seemed to confuse the concept of life membership with his life story and managed to give the longest speech for the night thanking everyone.
I can tell you that Ian is the Human Resources manager of the Victorian Ambulance service and has been keeping the stats for the Tiges since 1979. Using the skills he picked up at Punt Rd, Ian managed to land a job as results manager for baseball and softball at the Olympics. His father also collected a life membership in 1994 and at one stage three generations of his family were keeping stats. When Ian started out, he had a couple of blokes with clip boards but now his stats team numbers 12 and they've got laptops and other technology to do the job that much better. Ian was almost moved to tears as he talked about his family and love of the Tiges - it was a touching moment.
Deposed President Leon Daphne - the long-time managing director of Nissan Australia - was awarded the next life membership in a major olive branch offering by the Clinton Casey team. Conveniently, Leon, who was president from 1993 till 1999, was in Japan on business. Who can forget the time he went to Japan in 1992 to be told that Nissan was closing its Australian manufacturing operations.
Anyway, the Tiges had a pretty barren period under Leon by the new broom praised him for lifting membership from 8000 to 29,000, average attendances from 22,000 to 39,000 and revenue from $5 million to $17 million.
Leon did help co-ordinate the Save Our Skins fundraiser and left the club debt-free. And Nissan remains a generous sponsor so it was appropriate he got the gong and his wife Kerry got up and gave a nice speech quoting hubby saying how thrilled and honoured he was.
The third life membership went to tough backman Scotty Turner who played 140 good games over 10 years. Scotty got the biggest cheer of the night and gave the blokiest speech.
"Thanks Prez," he said at the start before he went onto thank all the players by their nick names along with "me favourite grog squad behind the goals".
"I'm looking forward to sitting in the outer having a can watching a few of the young blokes run around," he said. Aren't we all Scotty.
Well down son. I'll never forget the time you flattened Gary O'Donnell in that famous second semi final victory over the Bombers at the G about five years back. That was our greatest day since 1982.
Bondy, board coups and lock-outs: Richmond AGMs
Stephen Mayne
Crikey Contributor
A Crikey reader has kindly sent in an account of various Richmond Football Club AGMs over the years as we prepare to attend our first RFC meeting on Jan 25. Come on down to Crown for the 8pm start and join in the action.
21 January 2001
Being dragged from the tennis at 5-5 in the first was not something we enjoyed - especially when the construction at Federation Square caused a massive traffic jam on the way to the Crown Palladium room for the 8pm start.
New President Clinton Casey gave a brief introduction to the board explaining the various committees they were on and then threw to Garry Cameron, the former Telstra finance director who is now managing director of the Grand Hotel Group which owns the Grand Hyatt in Melbourne.
Despite racking up a $600,000-plus loss for the year, this was explained by the dreadful injuries, higher than expected venue costs at Docklands where too many home games were scheduled and a $100,000 sponsorship shortfall.
When it came to questions on the financials no-one was prepared to ask any questions, including Crikey who could not find either his membership card or the financial accounts.
The director elections were the fastest Crikey has ever seen anywhere. Clinton Casey threw to Craig Winter from PriceWaterhouseCoopers who simply said: "I declare that Tony Jewell, Peter Welsh and Terry (Someone) were re-elected unopposed."
It appears that no-one actually got to vote and the boys were simply re-elected because no-one else stood against them. What if the members wanted to vote them down. There was absolutely no opportunity to do that or for any discussion.
With that out of the way, at 8.20pm President Casey threw to an inspirational video of tenacious Tiger players tackling hapless Geelong rivals to the backing of "What's my scene".
Danny Frawley then took the stage for precisely 16 minutes. Nine senior players walked up on stage for various awards followed by a similar number of shy looking kids who have been drafted or recruited from across the country.
Danny insisted that we only clap once they were all on stage and we were reassured when he told us that he'd "never seen a group work harder" in the pre-season.
He briefly went through the highs and lows of the season, openly conceding that "where we finished on the ladder was low enough".
But things are changing at Tigerland. Five new directors swept onto the board 14 months ago, Matthew Knights has been replaced as captain by Wayne Campbell who almost left the club a couple of years back. Cambo stood up briefly from the front row when introduced but apart from that kept a very low profile for the night. Danny has only been in the job for 12 months and has completely overhauled the coaching staff, but none of the new guard had any history with the club. This makes the recent appointment of former Best and Fairest winner Trevor Poole as Football Operations manager a reassuring thing for those of us that like to see a bit of loyalty around the place.
With all these injuries last year, it was good to hear Danny explain that "we have overhauled the conditioning staff" under the leadership of Dr Noel Duggan.
To wind up Danny's speech we got to see some video footage of the new recruits and the two Aboriginal lads - one called Andrew Krakour - certainly caught our eye. Inspirationally, the background music was the Bitter Sweet Symphony - if only there'd been some more sweetness over the past 20 years.
We then moved along to the awarding of three new life membership and this is where proceedings almost got emotional.
Club statistician Ian Williams seemed to confuse the concept of life membership with his life story and managed to give the longest speech for the night thanking everyone.
I can tell you that Ian is the Human Resources manager of the Victorian Ambulance service and has been keeping the stats for the Tiges since 1979. Using the skills he picked up at Punt Rd, Ian managed to land a job as results manager for baseball and softball at the Olympics. His father also collected a life membership in 1994 and at one stage three generations of his family were keeping stats. When Ian started out, he had a couple of blokes with clip boards but now his stats team numbers 12 and they've got laptops and other technology to do the job that much better. Ian was almost moved to tears as he talked about his family and love of the Tiges - it was a touching moment.
Deposed President Leon Daphne - the long-time managing director of Nissan Australia - was awarded the next life membership in a major olive branch offering by the Clinton Casey team. Conveniently, Leon, who was president from 1993 till 1999, was in Japan on business. Who can forget the time he went to Japan in 1992 to be told that Nissan was closing its Australian manufacturing operations.
Anyway, the Tiges had a pretty barren period under Leon by the new broom praised him for lifting membership from 8000 to 29,000, average attendances from 22,000 to 39,000 and revenue from $5 million to $17 million.
Leon did help co-ordinate the Save Our Skins fundraiser and left the club debt-free. And Nissan remains a generous sponsor so it was appropriate he got the gong and his wife Kerry got up and gave a nice speech quoting hubby saying how thrilled and honoured he was.
The third life membership went to tough backman Scotty Turner who played 140 good games over 10 years. Scotty got the biggest cheer of the night and gave the blokiest speech.
"Thanks Prez," he said at the start before he went onto thank all the players by their nick names along with "me favourite grog squad behind the goals".
"I'm looking forward to sitting in the outer having a can watching a few of the young blokes run around," he said. Aren't we all Scotty.
Well down son. I'll never forget the time you flattened Gary O'Donnell in that famous second semi final victory over the Bombers at the G about five years back. That was our greatest day since 1982.