Mark Ricciuto can’t juggle media role with leadership job at Adelaide Football Club
Mark Ricciuto is again learning why being in the media and in the Crows board room is becoming increasingly difficult … and dangerous, writes Michelangelo Rucci.
- Bickley: Why it’s not all doom and gloom at Adelaide
- How to get the most out of your Advertiser digital subscription
It is a brave man who bites the hand that feeds him, even those who “volunteer” to an AFL board managing $58 million of turnover, 60,000 members and 700,000 fans.
No wonder Crows premiership ruckman David Pittman is reluctant to answer the call to return to the Adelaide Football Club to be a pragmatic, well-prepared, much-needed appointee to a board that is under fire for being out of touch with its membership base.
As much as the Crows need his practical knowledge — in football and business — Pittman does not need another chapter in his AFL resume. More so when the chairman-president at an AFL club can have as many as 70 hours a week taken from his life … as a volunteer.
Stream every match of the 2019 Toyota AFL Finals Series before the Grand Final live and on-demand on KAYO SPORTS. Get your 14-day free trial and start streaming instantly>
Again, one of the most-important forums at a multimillion-dollar club — in a game that has become an “industry” — is still controlled in the board room, the top end of the club, by people offering their expertise as volunteers.
Good-meaning people. Ideal in their intentions — and reliant on paid staff for the execution of policy set in the board room.
Few of these volunteers are known too well by the membership, even those who are “captains of industry”. Very few are straddling the dangerous cliff of being a silent board member while seeking headlines in a noisy AFL media landscape.
Brownlow Medallist and Crows hero Mark Ricciuto is well known — and he is certainly well heard.
Ricciuto’s biting halftime assessment of Adelaide coach Don Pyke’s game plan in the last home game at Adelaide Oval against Collingwood a fortnight ago was — as Ricciuto later made known — great for his employer, Fox Footy. It was not great for Pyke to be publicly challenged by an insider, a board member charged with the football portfolio.
Ricciuto’s statements on Triple M on Sunday — after Adelaide’s season ended — again were perfect for his media employer but far from ideal for a football club needing to reassure a disappointed, frustrated membership and fan base.
Ricciuto is not the first club servant to find himself at odds with his team’s membership base.
Ron Joseph, one of the men who masterminded the rise of the North Melbourne Football Club for the Kangaroos’ first VFL premierships in the 1970s, once famously walked the mound at Arden Street to be taken on by a frustrated club member.
After being lectured by this fan on how disappointed he was in North Melbourne’s on-field results and questioned why he was “wasting” his money on a membership, Joseph asked the agitator: “How much did you pay for the membership?”
“Forty dollars,” came the blunt reply.
Joseph took $40 from his wallet, handed it to the disgruntled member and told him to move on (or words that effect).
In the past fortnight, two high-profile men have spoken of change at their clubs.
At Hawthorn, controversial president Jeff Kennett — in his second stint as the volunteer leader at the Hawks — wrote a three-page letter to his club’s members and could read, re-read and edit his comments. He said: “Clearly the football department has a lot of work to do over the next few weeks in making decisions about our list next year.
“Whatever they decide can I remind all members we employ the best people in the competition. Because they are the best, the board at times challenges their decisions but invariably accepts their recommendations. The coaches’ responsibility and that of your board is to make the best decisions in the interest of the club and its members.
“We do not and cannot operate on an emotional basis, but what is in the best interests of you — our members, our shareholders. To that end we are bound to use our best endeavours and our best collective judgments to advance the story of this great club.
“And you must admit our record has been pretty good over the last 15 years. In fact, no club has beaten or come close to our success rate, but within that, we can’t expect to compete for silverware every year.”
At West Lakes, Ricciuto — with no pause and re-record button on live radio — went down the same path with a terrible finish after emphasing everything and everyone from the top to the bottom of the Adelaide Football Club needed to be reviewed. He added: “Whatever decision has to be made from top to bottom will be made for the betterment of the football club and the supporters should back our people in.
“And if they don’t, well then maybe they don’t need to barrack for the footy club.”
Those last 16 words did more damage than all the forthright statements Ricciuto made in the previous six minutes of his radio statement. Taking on the members and fans — even the 0.5 per cent that Ricciuto is still opposing for being challenging with their feedback — never works.
It smacks of an arrogance that inevitably — as noted this week — brings to attention how the Adelaide and Port Adelaide football clubs have, particularly since their “independence” from the SANFL since 2014, fallen out of the control of the membership bases.
This system of AFL-appointed and club co-opted boards was to protect the Crows and Power from pitchfork carrying members leading a revolt. But it also can lead to the impression the directors have a disconnect with the membership — and fan bases.
Ricciuto, like another Brownlow Medallist board member, Chris Judd at Carlton, is challenged by the need to be heard as a paid game-day analyst on television and radio — and a prudent club spokesman. It is the most difficult balancing act that is becoming tougher with more and more air space to fill with racy AFL debates.
No wonder inaugural Crows chief executive and later chairman Bill Sanders told former Adelaide players — such as Pittman — they could not serve their media masters and on the Adelaide Football Club board at the same time. The conflict of interest was impossible to manage a decade ago — and more so today.
Ricciuto will not fall off the Adelaide board. The Crows cannot afford to have him outside the tent creating headlines from his radio studio. But now is clear that Ricciuto cannot be Rob Chapman’s successor as club chairman, a role he probably was not able to take on without compromising his media work anyway.
It never pays to bite the hand that feeds you.
REALITY BITES
Port Adelaide president David Koch called every player at his club — both AFL contracted and SANFL-listed — to the Adelaide Oval changerooms immediately after Sunday’s dead-rubber win against Fremantle for a decisive moment.
It could have been taken as an ominous act.
The message was short — and clear.
Ken Hinkley was remaining the club’s AFL coach for Season 2020, for the Port Adelaide Football Club’s 150th year. He would be at Alberton first thing Monday morning setting the agenda for the AFL team’s program.
Hinkley will start his eighth AFL season at Port Adelaide after inheriting a basket case in October 2012 and having the Power place fifth, third, ninth, 10th, seventh, 10th and 10th. Premiership coach Malcolm Blight notes Mark Thompson won his first AFL premiership in his eighth season at Geelong after placing at seventh, 12th, ninth, 12th, fourth, fifth and 10th. And the same theme applied with Damien Hardwick at Richmond — 15th, 12th, 12th, seventh, eighth, seventh and 13th before winning a drought-breaking flag in his eighth year as senior coach.
And Koch made it clear to the players who were still eligible for SANFL finals that they were to deliver the State league flag.
This will be music to the ears of the SANFL administration that has both AFL reserves teams in the State league’s top-five finals series — and needs the Power and Crows to be true to the competition’s integrity.
Port Adelaide and the Crows clash on Saturday evening in the qualifying final at Adelaide Oval with the Power having 20 players eligible for selection; Adelaide, 18. The eligibility rules limit Port Adelaide and the Crows to playing no more than 17 in a final.
The dream SANFL grand final might be minor premier Glenelg and Port Adelaide, a duel that has played to Port Adelaide’s favour in 1977, 1981, 1988, the turbulent 1990 season when the AFL storm overcame the SANFL and 1992.
Football is far from over this season.