Political uncertainty and a lack of vision at Collingwood

Well, by now everybody knows about Collingwood’s political uncertainty.

Mark Korda is the incumbent. Jeff Browne would seem to be the challenger. 40-year member David Hatley is spearheading a petition that will trigger an EGM and spill the board.

The last time I recall such a thing happening was in 1982, when the New Magpies challenged the Collingwood board. The incumbents were traditionalists. Their purse strings were tight. The New Magpies wanted to spend big, recruit big and haul the club into the new age to compete with clubs recruiting heavily to buy success.

The New Magpies stormed in, but messed it up and nearly bankrupted the club. In 1986, players were forced to take a pay cut. President Ranald Macdonald resigned. Treasurer Allan McAlister succeeded him and oversaw a focused, meticulous, anonymous administration that built the 1990 flag side.

Then it was back to the typical Collingwood hyperbole.

Eddie McGuire came to power in 1999 in what was recognised as a “bloodless coup” – bloodless maybe, but a coup all the same. Back then, McGuire was quoted as saying that he felt Collingwood accepted defeat too easily. 20 years later, he would remark premierships weren’t everything.

(Photo by Darrian Traynor/Getty Images)

It’s hard to get a gauge on his successor, Mark Korda. Korda’s initial addresses comprised him apologising for decisions the prior administration (which he was part of) had made (such as the trade debacle). He followed that up with several interviews where he spoke with about as much conviction as Collingwood move the ball.

In light of David Hatley’s petition, Korda has framed what’s happening as a “coup”. I imagine he continues to attempt to frame it this way to paint Hatley as the villain, and create an us versus them mentality – a PR exercise: incite patriotism and get everybody behind the defence of the club.

But what Hatley’s doing isn’t a coup. A coup is when a hostile group overthrows the incumbents to take power. Hatley is asking that the board be spilled and each position go back to the members for election. Hatley’s demanding democracy. After all, the last election at Collingwood was 23 years ago.

If we’re going to be dramatic, what Hatley’s doing is a liberation from tyranny.

Korda doesn’t believe so. He wrote an open letter that was published in the Herald Sun. Coups are bad. Well, at least he thinks so. Eddie McGuire, who hand-selected his board, agrees. McGuire said he chose board members who didn’t meet the eligibility criteria, but who were ratified at AGMs.

And where does all this leave Collingwood?

Prior to McGuire’s resignation, several people – such as Craig Kelly and James Clement – were touted as possible successors. Kelly might be considered conflicted now that his son, Will, is on Collingwood’s playing list. Clement is on the Fremantle board. Peter Murphy, who was joint interim president with Korda for a brief period, seems to have sadly slipped out of calculations – sadly, because Murphy’s recommendations in 2017-18 helped Collingwood charge up the ladder. Jeff Browne now appears to be the heir apparent but is remaining remarkably low-key.

And that’s it.

I would’ve thought that any number of Collingwood people would’ve been keen to take the club and steer them from turbulent waters. I do wonder if the 23-year oligarchy has made potential suitors wary, or if the hand-selection process has conditioned them to wonder if they should bother if they’re not cliqued up.

Some Collingwood fans will disagree, but I see the club in a perilous state: queries on the list profile, the salary cap, sponsors, the coaches, the gameplan, the president and the administration – that’s every key aspect of the club’s primary focus: the football team.

(Photo by Dylan Burns/AFL Photos via Getty Images)

It staggers me that some fans claim there’s nothing to see here. Trust in the club and all that. Under that mandate, the status quo would never change. You’d never change coach. You’d never change president. There’d be no challenger in any regard. Just trust in what is – even when all the evidence is highlighting an iceberg on the horizon.

You have a growing chorus of concerned supporter who are being dismissed or – worse – condemned. It’s hysteria. It’s negativity. It’s just bad supporting. Shame on them. Slink into the night, contrite, if not ashamed. They’re not real supporters. They don’t get it. They’re antiquated and no longer understand the contemporary game – some (younger) supporters are saying this, ignoring that coaches and administrators and the people they’re backing come from exactly the same vintage as the people they’re dismissing.

Honestly, how could so many people get it wrong? If everything that’s happened at Collingwood in the last eight months hasn’t at the very least given you pause, hasn’t at least raised a single question in your head, hasn’t made you even raise the tiniest query about the club’s powerbrokers, then I would question your judgement.

The only consensus is that everybody wants the best for the club.

Of the current players in the political field, only Hatley has expressed any vision for Collingwood’s future. He has spoken calmly but eloquently in each of his interviews. This is not some egomaniac, as some would suggest; or an agitator; or somebody who’s simply upset about Collingwood’s current ladder standing. He’s somebody who loves the club and is worried not only about its current state, but where it’s heading.

Korda has offered nothing but generalisations – ranging from his initial proclamation several weeks ago that Collingwood would play finals, to his contradictory reversion in his Herald Sun letter that Collingwood’s window of premiership contention had slammed shut last year.

(Quinn Rooney/Getty Images)

Browne’s said nothing. Everything associated with Browne comes through hearsay.

And if there’s a third party out there, lurking, they’re biding their time.

Surely, somebody other than Hatley – somebody wanting to run the club – should be promoting a vision for the future: where they see the Collingwood Football Club in five, ten, 15, 20 and 25 years. This is what happens in political campaigns: months before any election, the candidates (both incumbents and challengers) will tell us what they’re about and how they’re going to make a difference.

In this case, it has to be more than hyperbole and a call to arms – Collingwood’s typical fallback. It has to be measured, constructive, realistic, and honest. More than anything else, it has to be ambitious.

A proclamation of a flag and the biggest membership base in five years sounds profoundly stirring, but it’s definitively Trumpian without genuine insight into how that’s going to be accomplished. In fact, it’s just noise, and there’s been enough of that at Collingwood for a long, long time now.

Whoever takes the reigns going into the future – be it Mark Korda, Jeff Browne, or somebody else – has to identify, acknowledge, and address the club’s (for the want of a better term) indulgences, and how they’ve restricted or sabotaged the club from realising genuine and sustained greatness.

(Photo by Quinn Rooney/Getty Images)

Collingwood’s had grabs at it, and enjoyed it fleetingly, but inevitably it’s slipped from their grasp – or, in other cases, been slam-dunked into the wastebasket. Two flags in 60 years doesn’t lie. If finals and good home-and-away seasons are enough, I would counter that’s not ambitious at all, and that contentment with anything but the ultimate is part of the problem.

Obviously, every club is striving for accomplishment but often, I think many (and particularly Collingwood) fall prey to their own cultural and historical programming, and rather than develop the self-awareness to make a significant change and promote growth and plot a new course, fall into the whirlpool of everything that ever has been, therefore continuing to perpetuate what they are.

McGuire’s a great example: from proclaiming Collingwood accepted defeat too easily to advocating 20 years later it wasn’t all about flags. In his resignation speech, he highlighted Collingwood’s off-field endeavours. Great. More power to him, his presidency, and the club.

But the core objective of any sporting organisation, of any sporting individual, is to win.

That is the priority.

Somewhere along the line, Collingwood’s forgotten that’s the case.