Former Hawthorn president Ian Dicker reveals his $1 Waverley investment that turned into a windfall

It was the best $1 investment Ian Dicker has ever made. And while it may have taken longer than the Hawks wanted, their Waverley investment has well and truly paid off.

It was the best $1 investment Ian Dicker has ever made.

Hawthorn was looking for a new home in the early 2000s after quite literally running out of room at its traditional Glenferrie Oval base.

Dicker, the then-Hawks president and a shrewd but highly principled businessman, was negotiating with property developer Mirvac on a plan to move the club’s training and administrative base to Waverley Park.

The Hawks will soon depart Waverley for Dingley.

It hadn’t been used as a venue since the Hawks played the final AFL game there in 1999.

Mirvac was in the process of buying the largely abandoned stadium from the AFL for $110m and, thanks to some nudging from the state government, had offered the cash-strapped Hawks the chance to secure freehold of the oval and part of the Sir Kenneth Luke Stand … for nothing.

The developer believed the Hawks’ presence could help sell its plan for the proposed 1200 new residential homes and 1250 new apartments for the precinct.

Dicker recalled this week: “I knew from business law that you needed to have something in the contract, so I said: ‘What about a dollar?’

“We discussed it at board level and we agreed that we would offer a dollar because we didn’t really have any money.

“It ended up being the best deal, not only for the club, but in my whole business life.”

That $1 coin which Dicker ceremonially handed over when the club took control in late 2005 – less than one litre of milk back then – this week turned into a windfall of somewhere between $10m and $20m.

Dicker at the Hawks 100th anniversary celebrations. Picture: Michael Klein

That’s what the AFL has agreed to pay Hawthorn for the oval and facilities, making the $1 deal two decades ago one of the greatest in Australian sporting history.

Add to that the fact that Dicker estimated that Mirvac spent around $6m bringing the oval and the facilities into shape for the Hawks to officially move there in late 2005.

Plus the almost 20-year rentals the Hawks have received from the businesses who have operated out of its Waverley Park base.

Dicker joked this week he, too, made a profit, albeit a modest one ($5).

He handed over his own $1 coin to Mirvac, but reckons at least five people gave him $1 coins for the payment, eager to have their money go down in history.

“A lot of people came up to me and said: ‘Here’s a dollar’. I got about six dollars out of it, but I only gave them one,” he laughed.

He had one of those coins mounted on the wall of his office, knowing the significance of the deal which not safeguard the Hawks in the first quarter century of the 2000s, but which has now provided the last bit of funding for the club’s state-of-the-art $100m Kennedy Community Centre, in Dingley, which the club will move to later this year.

SAVING THE HAWKS

Dicker was at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics when his secretary faxed him a report detailing how Hawthorn and Melbourne members were to vote on a proposed merger of the two clubs.

He was stunned.

A long-time club Gold Pass member, he had no desire to seek office. But he could barely believe the once-proud but then financially bereft club was likely to become almost a subservient party to become the Melbourne Hawks.

He resolved to help Operation Payback, a group of passionate supporters and former players, including premiership hero Don Scott, who wanted to fight the merger and planned to raise at least the $800,000 to keep the club afloat.

Hawthorn's Operation Payback team in 1996.

He set out a business plan for the future which offered the Hawks the chance to claw their way back slowly, after the merger vote ended with an emphatic no.

Dicker, who ended up becoming president, said this week: “We were supposed to complete the player payments by September 1996, and we didn’t complete the payments until the end of April 1997.

“We had no money. We owed not only the players but the bank was pushing us. I got another bank to guarantee us if the (other) bank withdrew. We were in real trouble.

“The players supported us completely in that period of time. They never once said ‘Where’s our money’ or threatened to go to other clubs.

“We set our goal to chase more members. We were going to shopping centres and wherever else we could, and the players were the first ones there. That’s why I have always ranked Shane Crawford so highly, as he was the leader in that.”

SAVING WAVERLEY

Hawthorn’s post-merger membership blitz worked, but also solidified something in the mind of Dicker and his board.

Waverley was not only valued by the Hawks fans, it was geographically important.

“(In 1997) we budgeted for our membership to go from 11,000 to 17,000, and we ended up with 27,000,” Dicker said.

“We plotted all the new members on a map of Australia and the majority of them – around 70 or 80 per cent – came from in and around Waverley. We needed to fight for Waverley as a playing ground.

“We could see that if we could get that, we would be in a unique position because St Kilda was ready to go to Docklands as it was back then.”

Ian Dicker with representatives of seven councils in the Waverley area who want to save AFL Park.

Hawthorn started meeting with councils in the Waverley region and lobbied the AFL to keep it alive as a playing venue,

But the league was committed to a new stadium at Docklands – with its retractable roof – in Melbourne’s CBD.

At one stage Dicker went to see then AFL commission powerbroker Graeme Samuel to discuss the ground’s future.

“Morton Browne (then Hawks CEO) and I went to see Graeme Samuel and Graeme said: ‘If you have $30m, you can buy it (Waverley),” Dicker recounted.

“He (Samuel) has denied it since, but Morton and I have talked about it many times.

“We didn’t have any money. So we started looking for joint venture partners. We spent the latter part of 1997, 1998 and into 1999 trying to find a way to keep it as a playing venue, not owning it.

“Then the AFL said we couldn’t play there anyway. They said there weren’t enough games to be spread. I laugh at that, (given) what’s happened with Geelong.”

Hawthorn played the 732nd – and last – game at Waverley in 1999, a month out from that year’s Victorian state election.

THE ELECTION UPSET THAT REVIVED WAVERLEY

Few gave Labor leader Steve Bracks any chance of upsetting Premier and prominent Hawthorn supporter Jeff Kennett leading into the 1999 election.

One of Bracks’ pre-election pledges was to keep Waverley as a football venue in one way, shape or form.

But soon after producing one of greatest upsets in Australian political history, Bracks knew the AFL would never allow matches again at Waverley.

So, as the league worked with developers pitching to buy the land and turn it into a residential development, Bracks called Dicker.

“Steve Bracks did win the ‘99 election … in the next six months he rang and said: ‘Would you like to use it (Waverley) as a home base,” Dicker said.

The Hawks sing the song after the last game as Waverley.

“We discussed it at board level.

“Steve put me in touch with one developer who was on a list of about four looking to buy it, and he wanted exclusive rights. The board agreed and we said yes. But about six months later that company was eliminated, so there were two parties left.

“One of them came to us and said ‘We can do the same deal’. So I went to the company who originally proposed it, and asked if we could break that agreement and he said yes.

That new developer was Mirvac, who ended up buying Waverley in December 2001.

DEAL OF A LIFETIME

Waverley Park had become an almost abandoned ground of long grass, graffiti and tumbleweeds in the years after its AFL playing days ceased.

But the sale to Mirvac and a partnership between the developer, the state government and the Hawks was set to transform the ground once more.

Discussions with the developer and the Hawks, which included Dicker and then chief executive Michael Brown, among others, worked on securing the freehold to the oval and the administration building, providing it could be brought up to state-of-the-art standards.

Initially, there had been plans for a 2000-car parking facility and a social club for Hawks members, but neither eventuated.

Hawthorn's current facilities at Waverley.

Hawthorn’s priority was to ensure it had cutting-edge training facilities and a base for all levels of the club.

Dicker used some of his US contacts at the Green Bay Packers, Chicago Bulls and other sporting franchises, as he toured those facilities along with board member and club great Dermott Brereton and senior coach Peter Schwab.

The final Mirvac agreement included an indoor swimming pool with the idea coming from the Chicago Bulls Strategic Centre, the full set-up of the gym, an indoor running track as well as the administration base, the Hawks museum and a significant upgrade of the ground.

“What it also said in the contract was that the ground had to be presented to us the size and condition of the MCG,” he said.

“They (Mirvac) delivered what we asked … a great training ground and base, and a great venue for the offices.”

It took longer than Dicker or the Hawks wanted, but when the keys were handed over to the club in late 2005, it gave the club long regarded as the most successful of the modern era the tools to chase more silverware.

Dicker will never forget the day he handed over his $1 coin: “It was out at Waverley in the training area and there were about 100 people there.”

The iconic John Kennedy statue at Waverley. Picture: Jason Edwards

“The one thing I do remember about that day was we had a photo of John Kennedy and (Kennedy’s wife) Dulcie, and Barbara (Dicker’s wife) and I.”

He will also never forget an early training session in 2006 when a dozen Hawthorn players ran over to him to thank him for helping them secure a ground surface as good as Waverley.

Hawthorn would go on to win the flag in 2008, then a club-first hat-trick of flags from 2013-15, with Waverley playing a big part in their preparation and process.

An incredibly modest man, who insisted he was only a part of a wider team always eager to serve Hawthorn, Dicker said the club’s move to Dingley later this year would keep pushing the Hawks to be bold and adventurous into the future.

Just as they were two decades ago, when a $1 coin turned out to be the deal of a lifetime.

Originally published as Former Hawthorn president Ian Dicker reveals his $1 Waverley investment that turned into a windfall