In black and white: Collingwood’s Political Malaise

For the last four months, I’ve enjoyed Collingwood‘s off-field administration.

The club handled Nathan Buckley‘s departure with class; their process to appoint Craig McRae as senior coach was exhaustive and meticulous; in the trade period, they expediently picked up Nathan Kreuger, Patrick Lipinski, and the points to pick up Nick Daicos.

They’ve done everything you could ask to rebirth out of last year’s ashes.

Despite finishing second last, I’m liking this version of Collingwood.

It’s the version I’ve always wanted: quiet; unassuming; and standing on accomplishment, rather than hyperbole.

And now, with Jeff Browne about to descend on the suddenly vacant presidency, I worry that this will all implode spectacularly.

Let’s examine what’s going on right now.

With Jeff Browne, here’s a guy who’s only about the presidency. He doesn’t want to come onto the board and win favour. He must be president. Okay. Well, maybe he truly believes he will be the agency for change and improvement, and he’s the only one capable of accomplishing that. Eddie McGuire once believed similarly.

But we’re still operating without knowing anything about Browne’s plans. There’s a genius in that, though. Since he first emerged, Browne’s articulated nothing about his Collingwood vision. People have told me he’s standing for this and for that. Right. I defy anybody to go out there and find exactly where Browne’s said what they’re claiming.

They won’t.

Browne could’ve pushed a vision. It would’ve given members a reason to judge him – to vote yay or nay. But saying nothing has compelled members to project into the silence. Their disenfranchisement with the incumbents has fuelled their own desires for a better Collingwood, and they’ve attributed those desires to Browne as the flag-bearer. But Browne himself has said nothing.

Oh, he’s given us criticisms. His seven-point critique roused the masses. Here was somebody who understood the Collingwood plight. Here was somebody who got it. Here was somebody influential and powerful who could stand for them.

RELATED: Jeff Browne officially challenges Mark Korda for Collingwood presidency

Like it really took genius to articulate criticisms midway through a disastrous season. If you didn’t see Collingwood’s 2021 coming all the way back in November of 2020 – when three players had just been exited messily, the list focus had shifted to youth, and an embattled coach was still championing an ultra-defensive gameplan – then you weren’t looking hard, or honestly, enough.

Part of me hopes that come the AGM/EGM, Browne articulates that his vision for a better Collingwood is that we all wear tinfoil hats. Then all the members scratch their heads and wonder what they’ve gotten themselves in for.

This premise – as glib as it is – highlights the absurdity of claims that we don’t need to hear anything until the AGM/EGM itself. Or that we don’t need to hear anything until Browne announces his candidacy. Um, what? We’ve known he’s the challenger for the last six months. We’ve known some sort of vote awaits us. He’s been constantly manoeuvring behind the scenes.

And with that being the case, we need to hear what Browne’s about because we need to know our challenger and need to know whether this course is both justified, and just. That’s politics. Candidates don’t just sell their vision a day before the election. They spend months doing it – first within their own party, and then on a grander scale.

Browne, though? Nope.

That’s not to say Browne might not be a great leader. But I offer zero buy-in while he offers zero vision.

Unlike some, I’m not foolish enough to run to the shiny new thing just because it is a shiny new thing. I need more than that. That’s not unreasonable. In fact, any intelligent supporter should want the same rather than blindly flock to Browne simply because he offers change, or defend his silence as warranted when all it’s promoting is the absence of a platform.

Some might counter that Browne’s informed the current board of his vision, and that’s good enough for them. But haven’t we all lambasted the board for arbitrarily appointing administrators without consulting the members? It’s the same thing. We’re told nothing and others decide what’s best for the club.

And I won’t champion Browne as presidency material because of his professional CV, as others suggest. Carlton‘s had a string of successful business people run their club for the last twenty years. How’s that working out for them? While football is a business, it still requires a specific skillset.

But people will clamour he’s better than Mark Korda, who recently announced he was stepping down as president. Korda’s detractors celebrated. I used to be one of them. I was originally a huge Korda critic, although – like so many – I was assigning criticism to Korda by association, and/or assumption. He was part of the McGuire administration that oversaw the salary cap and list management debacle. He had to be culpable given he was there.

Of course, we all originally viewed Collingwood’s salary cap overflow as mismanagement. Somebody got their sums wrong! Apparently not. McGuire himself has repeatedly painted the contract back-ending extravaganza as a strategy.

RELATED: Jeff Browne claims Korda's board 'botched' Pies' salary cap

Mismanagement and strategy are two different things entirely, and when you reconcile that, it pivots your thinking. If it’s not mismanagement, then nobody can be held responsible as incompetent. We’re left to assess the validity of the strategy (which most critics haven’t done – they’re still belabouring the incompetence angle).

Was it worth it? If Collingwood had won a flag, some would endorse it. Some still will because Collingwood got so close. I query it, though. I don’t believe in a scorched Earth policy. A club should build for sustained contention – as Geelong, Hawthorn and Richmond did, and as it looks like Melbourne has done. Collingwood didn’t do that. They had a two-year window, and that’s it.

I wonder about the motivation that drove this all or nothing approach. Given McGuire’s zealous defence of it, I can only speculate on why he pushed it as viable. Did it have anything to do with desperately attempting to belatedly validate the oft debated and ill-fated succession? Did ego prioritise McGuire’s own legacy beyond the team’s contention longevity? Whatever the case, everybody at the club has been tarred in the aftermath.

Consequently, Korda’s critics have repeatedly lambasted him, and pounced on any faltering steps. I did it, too. It was easy. And considering the indignation and disappointment and disillusionment Collingwood supporters felt following last year’s string of disasters – an inglorious finals’ exit, a fire sale, McGuire’s disastrous “Do Better” report press conference, and sponsors threatening to jump – Korda became the target.

He unwittingly reinforced that focus when his early tenure as Collingwood president featured a series of inauspicious media salvos. He also seemed uncertain whether to divorce himself from his predecessor, Eddie McGuire, or to embrace him. In the end, Korda tried to walk a line between both options, which pleased nobody (as far as I’m aware). But, slowly, things began to change.

When Nathan Buckley and Collingwood parted ways, Korda didn’t highlight himself front and centre at the press conference, like McGuire would’ve. Korda stood off to one side, letting the moment be about Buckley. I know several people who saw this as a significant shift for Collingwood – a president who wasn’t about hyperbole and the spotlight. How novel.

It was also a dignified departure for Buckley, one of the club’s favourite sons. Some condemned the board, as if they did this to buy themselves time. The team was struggling horrifically. The gameplan had been deteriorating over the last three years. There was a sense of stagnancy. The decision was justified, and ultimately handled with class. Compare that to how Carlton treated David Teague.

Korda flexed a bit of muscle when Browne started making a bit of noise about wanting to be president. Even though I was still a critic of Korda at this time, I liked this side of him. Solid. Nasty. Even a little vindictive. I half-hoped he’d challenge Browne to a fight, a la Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s “Two Tribes”. That would seem an ideal way to conclusively decide who should be president given neither were publicly telling us anything.

Because there’s the thing: Korda went mute, too. You’d think he would’ve politicked in response to Browne. Nope. In retrospect, you can see what the club decided: to keep their heads down, and bums up, and try to win support through accomplishment, rather than campaigning – another novel approach for the club.

And the reality is they’ve been doing exactly that. The club has been moving forward positively and constructively, navigating their way out of the mess that was 2020, and Eddie McGuire’s inglorious (yet spectacular) demise. You can see that they have a plan, regardless how many critics claim they're aimless or inept.

I don’t know a single person who hasn’t lauded Collingwood’s process to appoint their new senior coach, Craig McRae. I did see criticism of Korda at the press conference. He wasn’t eloquent. He wasn’t polished. Because these are the only things that matter apparently when you’re president. This criticism is irrelevant, if not moronic. It’s the equivalent of saying Elon Musk can't be a successful entrepreneur because he's no good at tennis.

Then the Neil Wilson ineligibility emerged, as well as Bride O’Donnell’s resignation, which reignited all the past vitriol. People who’d commended the club for the process that appointed McRae were now just days later condemning the club and citing they had no idea what they were doing. Well, which is it?

I criticized the O’Donnell appointment at the time. Now, after a lot of thought, I don’t care. The truth is that O’Donell’s appointment – and, more importantly, her Twitter account, where she mocked Collingwood – was just the straw when McGuire’s era had already burdened the camel’s back.

RELATED: Collingwood faithful voice leadership concerns through petition to force EGM

Now, with some distance, with some calm, I’ve changed my outlook: just get me the best people for the club. I’d rather have the best candidate, even if they supported Carlton, than the second, third, fourth, or thirty-fifth best candidate, just because they support Collingwood.

We all wanted a candidate from outside Collingwood’s gene pool as coach, yet we only want Collingwood people running the club? That’s not a double standard or anything, is it? Some might suggest people who support the club will go above and beyond out of patriotism. Maybe. Equally, though, people who don’t support the club might have a clearer perspective of what’s required.

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As for Wilson’s and O’Donnell’s appointments, as onerous as they were, we’re criticizing the club as if they just initiated this practice to the affrontery of their members. We're criticizing the club as if they bungled the appointments by not checking if they satisfied the eligibility criteria.

Nope. It’s been standard practice for over two decades for the board to appoint members who didn't meet the eligibility criteria, and then have them ratified at the AGM. Eddie McGuire did it himself when he first showed up back in 1998–99, then kept doing it, and has proudly boasted about the methodology on Footy Classified.

Their appointments weren't mistakes or failures of due diligence (notwithstanding somebody should've told Bridie O'Donnell to clean her Twitter account of Collingwood criticism). Like the salary cap strategy, people need to pivot their thinking. These were purposeful choices.

I don’t believe it’s right. To be clear: I definitely don’t believe that. But neither do I find it as offensive anymore. The club should’ve managed it better. They should’ve gone to their members and said these were the candidates they were considering, and sold their bona fides, because both have them, rather than just arbitrarily thrusting them upon us and thinking we’d all be okay with it.

But that’s all done, so who really cares? Or continues to care? Or continues to use this as their soapbox? You get the sense that most have moved on and just want this bloody thing settled so the club can move forward.

The naysayers are now naysaying purely to echo their own biases. Their laments ignore all logic and any counters, surviving only because of their obliviousness. It’s like a child having a tantrum and clamping their hands over their ears so they don’t have to listen to anybody else. It’s not intelligent debate. It’s prejudice. But each to their own.

Ultimately, what it comes down to is dealing with the now.

In late September, Jake Niall and Michael Gleeson authored an article in The Age that posed there’d be a hybrid board, with Jeff Browne becoming president. That's now largely been confirmed, pending a vote at the AGM on the vacancies.

If you had to infer anything from proceedings in recent times, it’s that the Browne camp expected Korda to go immediately, rather than serve out his final year in 2022. If he didn't, they would've spilled the whole board. I can understand the symbolism of deposing the current head, but it's an act that smacks of aggression and ego.

And hypocrisy.

That’s always been one irrefutable criticism of Browne: he was happy to lambast the club about salary cap mismanagement and kept pointing at Korda, yet completely ignored McGuire. People will claim the past should remain in the past. Okay, then why has Browne advocated using McGuire?

None of it makes sense to divorce McGuire from criticism, even if he’s no longer there; or to use McGuire; or to run roughshod when the club is actively trying to negotiate a compromise. Some might suggest that’s self-preservation. It seems Browne’s happy with the course, which means he should be just as liable for criticism.

Ultimately, we have another scorched Earth policy: do whatever’s necessary to anoint Jeff Browne as president under his conditions. He’s the Chosen One, apparently. As an aside, if McGuire had served out his final year (as originally intended) and been able to groom a successor, I wonder if that successor would’ve been Jeff Browne. Nobody’s asked the question. But are we dealing with a sense of entitlement?

However you cut it, it’s worrying.

Collingwood just expunged one high-profile president. The club’s been functioning well. I’ve been criticising this club for years but can acknowledge that in the here and now those grievances have been addressed, and I like this incarnation of Collingwood. I’ve grown to trust and believe in the people in charge.

I equate it with an underperforming team who suddenly finds direction when they replace the coach. The personnel hasn’t changed. The landscape remains largely the same. But now there’s purpose. That in itself should tell you something.

That’s not to say there shouldn’t be voting on vacancies. There should. Candidates should put themselves forward. If you’re eligible and you want a say, raise your hand. If the club has their preferences, they should explain why these people have been chosen, how they’ll help the club, and welcome not only member feedback, but supporter feedback.

This is a flip from where I stood previously. Because I know somebody will assert it, I haven’t been bought off, manipulated, or duped. I’ve gotten better informed, examined the new landscape, and reassessed what I believe needs to happen in the here and now, rather than six months ago. That’s what adults do: try to get as much information as possible before making a decision.

What I don’t think is needed is another high-profile president who is strong-arming his way into power. Here’s somebody demanding that despite the club running well (so many people acknowledge the last four months have not only been good but built a foundation for the future) that the presidency be handed to him, or every position will be spilled. It’s his way or the highway. Things are being fixed, but to hell with that – let’s break it all again so it can be remade in his image.

None of this brims with ego, does it? Korda gets tarred as being egotistical, as doing anything and everything to cling to power (despite standing down and seeming to be the driver of the compromise), but what do you call this? Why isn’t this under the spotlight? How is it that different?

It isn't. But in this debate, selectivity is the key. As are double standards.

I’ll also address a counter I’m sure somebody will throw out: the club is running well thanks to Graham Wright as General Manager of Football. He’s solely responsible. This ignores that Jodie Sizer was the star at the “Do Better” report press conference, that Paul Licuria put together the process to appoint the new coach, and as far as other matters are concerned, Wright works in conjunction with those around him.

There’ll be other counters. It’s interesting watching the myths promulgated on social media. It truly shows the power of online discussion to embellish, shout at clouds, and win people over to crusades built on swamps. If you keep shouting the same thing often enough to your handful of Twitteroupies, surely it must be true – right?

But let’s go back to that article in The Age. According to Niall and Gleeson, Peter Murphy – who was briefly joint president with Korda in the wake of McGuire’s resignation – offered not to stand for re-election to ensure there would be a smooth transition.

Let’s study this more closely.

Murphy reviewed the club at the end of 2017 and offered a raft of suggestions that contributed to Collingwood soaring up the ladder in 2018. This is public knowledge. He’s declined the presidency, despite media reports claiming Korda and Murphy were organizing a succession to foil Browne.

Well, that never happened. But, hey, it got the nutters out of the rafters rambling again about how corrupt this board was, even if they did laud them just a week earlier for their process in appointing McRae. It also highlighted – magnificently highlighted – the irrationality of their criticism and how tiresome it's become. It didn’t have to have any basis in, um, fact. Why let the truth get in the way of a good accusation?

Now, Murphy’s allegedly offering not to stand. He’s sacrificing himself for the good of Collingwood – he doesn’t want a divided board and is trying to ensure a seamless transition. Keep this in mind. However, the popular opinion is if Murphy went to election, he’d win his place back.

I’ll go one further: if the AGM (or even an EGM) vote was about electing a president (rather than a board, who would then internally elect their president), Murphy would win in a landslide. Instead, we’ll be getting a runner-up as Collingwood’s president. How wonderfully Collingwoodian.

I know numerous people who have wanted Murphy to take over based on the body of his work since he’s been there. In my writings and the (Collingwood) podcast I co-host, I’ve always championed Murphy because there’s genuine evidence of his credibility, despite what Francis Galbally might belch. Others have looked at the landscape and short of Browne offering us anything, have gravitated to Murphy.

At a time Collingwood has done something wonderfully unCollingwood – electing their coach through a rigorous process, rather than head-hunting some high-profile name – they have arrived at a juncture: do we continue to go the Collingwood way and blunder back into everything we’ve known or shall we keep venturing down the unCollingwood way, as frightening as that way seems?

Everybody invested in how the future will unfold needs to examine the best way of handling this. We’ve just had twenty-three years of pomp, braggadocio, and distraction, and right when you think the club might’ve had its moment of clarity, it’s heart-attack episode, it’s life-changing epiphany, it seems it’s going to remain a two-pack-a-day smoker.

Is this genuinely the way to go? Six months ago, I was at the forefront of demanding change. Now, it’s not even I case of me being unsure whether that should happen. I outright reject this course and, worse, fear it and what it means for Collingwood.

The club’s getting it right.

Finally. It’s happening, and it’s not hard to work out why. The equation's about the simplest you'd ever have to calculate.

Now you can imagine Browne coming aboard, and five years down the track being accredited with whatever success the club enjoys. Everybody will laud him when he had nothing to do with the reinvention, which is happening right now before our eyes.

The same thing happened with Eddie McGuire. He’s accredited with saving Collingwood, with moving them to the MCG, with signing the lucrative Emirates sponsorship that ushered in a whole raft of new sponsors. It’s all very romantic, but they were decisions the Kevin Rose administration made. They took effect when McGuire was in charge, so they’re attributed to him.

I mention this because reality and mythology often intertwine when it comes to football folklore, and the same is happening now with Jeff Browne. He is riding to the rescue of something that no longer needs rescuing, but people are still attached to the sentiment.

In five years’ time, he’ll get credit for things that the likes of Mark Korda, Paul Licuria, Jodie Sizer, Peter Murphy, Graham Wright, and others put in place. The critics continue to refuse to re-evaluate their stance with the zealousness of people who still claim the Earth is flat.

Here’s one final thing to consider: let’s go back to Peter Murphy and compare how he’s operated to Browne and his camp’s insistence that however it happens, Browne must be president.

Murphy’s the antithesis of Browne and what Browne’s doing.

In Murphy, here’s a guy who’s shown absolute selflessness, who hasn’t coveted the presidency, who’s helped fix Collingwood in the past first as an external consultant, and then as a board member; Murphy, the one guy who is exactly what this freaking club needs, who’s displayed no ego, who is putting the club before himself, could be the guy we’re sacrificing so we can again facilitate a bloodless coup d’état of a ready-made president and his cronies.

It’s happened before. It’s happening again.

The people who purport to genuinely love Collingwood and who have the club’s best interests at heart should re-examine what they believe is needed right now and put Collingwood in front of their own agendas.

But I know they won't.

It's the Collingwood way.