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I sat and watched a Fox Sports News segment on St Kilda’s captain and leadership group the other day just shaking my head.
No less than eight players have been inducted into the Saints leadership group, with Nick Riewoldt the captain. That’s almost half the bloody team, I thought.
Strangely, none of the remaining leadership group were named vice captain(s), so if Riewoldt is injured do the other seven all reach in to toss the coin?
New coach Scott Watters, with his game face on, then explained why Lenny Hayes, the widely respected and much loved game day hero at St Kilda, is not in the leadership group.
Watters, with a straight face, said that Lenny would be known as the leadership mentor. The what?
So we have St Kilda with a captain in Riewoldt, whose involvement in a bunch of ordinary photos last year seriously undermines his standing in the football world, no vice captains but seven players in the leadership group and, of course, the tokenistic leadership mentor role.
Folks, this was all delivered by the St Kilda brains trust with a serious face. The amount of consultant driven, life-coach type mumbo jumbo was staggering.
No wonder St Kilda are sliding. Just play football and let a true leader like Hayes lead the club.
North Melbourne has also clearly been at the life coach school of PR-speak and dribble.
At a press conference on Wednesday of this week, North Melbourne CEO Eugene Arocca announced rookie player Majak Daw had been suspended by the leadership group indefinitely.
Arocca offered little in way of explanation as to how Daw had broken rehabilitation protocols and team rules. All this for a player who has not even played an AFL game!
Yet the public were subjected to a bunch of politically correct oratory from Arocca mixed with the usual references to the ‘leadership group’.
Later that day, Brad Scott, North’s coach, spilled the beans on Daw’s transgressions in a plain and honest interview on radio 3AW.
That was leadership.
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