A seven-person group including a pair of Richmond premiership players in Bryan Wood and Bruce Monteath is pushing for a spill of the Richmond board as the 2016 off-season draws nearer.
There have been some rumours regarding attempts to challenge the board at Richmond for a while now and it seems that, for at least one faction, it has finally come to fruition.
The group call themselves ‘Focus on Footy’, a name that makes their agenda pretty clear. Richmond has been a pretty successful club off the field in recent times but fans are hungry for more on-field success, which has been a barren area for the Tigers for quite some time.
Their plan does not include removing incumbent coach Damien Hardwick and they also intend to retain CEO Brendon Gale and football boss Dan Richardson. The group will be looking to create a new position in the organisation, ‘CEO of football’, with the intent of luring Neil Balme to the job.
Balme was recently replaced as Collingwood’s football boss by Graeme Allan and is currently weighing up whether to take up a different role at Collingwood or move elsewhere. He has reportedly said he is not interested in being part of a board spill.
The group has contacted Richmond’s current board with a request for them to stand down. They are petitioning for an Extraordinary General Meeting to be called where they will put forward a ticket to be elected as the new Richmond board.
They have claimed to have “high-profile Richmond identities” supporting the ticket, though no names have surfaced.
“Make no mistake — this challenge is the real deal. There is a fighting fury amongst us. The Richmond Football Club is in crisis,” says Dr Martin Hiscox, the group’s leader.
“The current board has lived by a mantra of stability. This has now been replaced with overstated ‘strong and bold premiership club’, but there is nothing strong or bold about being complacent.
“It’s been difficult with all the mixed messages from Punt Road. If football isn’t taking a lot more seriously, it won’t be top eight next year, it will be bottom four.
“(We want an) inspired football culture… of success, accountability and ruthless, uncompromising football.
“We need to have right people and make right decisions. Clear decision has to involve a focus on football.”
Whether or not a movement like this is any realistic chance of succeeding isn’t clear but it will be fascinating to see how it plays out.
It’s not hard to understand how, despite making finals regularly over the past few years, Tigers fans could feel frustrated with the incumbent leadership, especially after such a stark dropaway in 2016.
However, like the fan in the stands who complains that he could have done it better when a player misses a set shot, it’s a pretty rare occasion that anyone is really willing to put their money where their mouth is.
While many would agree that there is need for change at Richmond – possibly at board level, possibly at other levels – it’s not a great idea just to change for change’s sake and give the job to whoever is the first to ask for it.
Like politics of any kind, it’s pretty easy to criticise the incumbents. It’s easy enough to say some good rhetoric and get people believing that it really is time for change. But overthrowing the old regime is not the hard part – building a successful new one is.
A lot of the board’s rhetoric, too, sounds more like the rage of fans than the wisdom of the enlightened.
Lines like “we are 35 years into a five-year plan” are the kind of thing you’d expect to hear in an angry mid-game Tigers fan tweet rather than in a professional press conference.
This ‘team of players Richmond could have drafted but didn’t’ feels about as amazingly amateurish as it gets, too.
Putting together a team of missed players where you where misspell Hannebery screams "level-headed professional" pic.twitter.com/xkSOXLxR1y
— Josh Elliott (@JoshElliott_29) September 5, 2016
Essentially, Tigers fans must ask themselves two questions – do we need change? And if the answer to that is yes – a resounding chorus of it, most likely – the much bigger question is, is this the right change to make?
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