FOOTY DEPARTMENT CUTS

MR: With hindsight, have the cuts to the footy department spend been too much because clubs aren’t happy?

GM: Difficult decisions were made in every area of football, the soft cap, cuts to the TPP (total player payments).

MR: Not much, it was only 3.5 per cent.

GM: No, that’s not true. It’s nine per cent this year. (Note: it’s 3.5 per cent for contracted players in 2021).

MR: And 36 per cent for footy departments?

GM: Everyone’s done their bit. We got through a $600 million reduction in revenue with an industry loss of about $50 million dollars, so I’m incredibly proud of what our players, our clubs, our coaches and my team have done to get that done, and to tell you who really did their bit — the members and supporters.

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MR: What do you say to the estimated 350 people who lost their jobs in football departments?

GM: They were across the board. It was an unbelievably difficult year and one of the most difficult things I had to do was make the decisions we made at head office.

MR: How many people were lost at head office?

GM: About 170.

MR: And an estimated 20 at each club

GM: It varies at each club. Difficult decisions were made. This is a response to a global pandemic and a $600m loss in revenue.

MR: So, will there be incremental increases in money for football departments over the coming years. Say, another $500,000 or $1 million next year and the year after?

GM: They are the discussions we are having now. At the moment with the clubs, there is a diagnostic sitting with them for their feedback on soft cap, TPP, club funding. And we are looking at other areas of our industry such as AFLW. So as we get back to the normalising and looking ahead with the new broadcast deal, we are looking at where we invest. Clearly, there is the footy departments and the soft cap, but there will be multiple areas putting up their hand. That’s the balance. Ultimately, we will work with the clubs to make a decision which gets us the right settings across the board. Soft cap is one, players are one, there’s also community football, women’s football. There’s a lot of areas which need investment.

THE ZACH WILLIAMS BUMP

MR: What was your initial thought when you saw the Zac Williams hit on Hunter Clark? Put on your former University Blues ruckman’s hat please.

GM: It’s not appropriate to talk about specific incidents.

MR: Why not, you saw it like we all saw it?

GM: What I will say is we are working hard to protect the head and make it sacrosanct.

MR: So, I ask, ‘what did you think of the Williams hit’ and you answer, ‘the head is sacrosanct’. Do you think a one-match suspension was appropriate?

GM: I’ve answered the question. It’s not appropriate for me as the chief executive to question the independent processes which are set up. You’re asking me about a decision of the tribunal. I support our process absolutely and we all have subjective views about what’s right or wrong. In the end, if we thought it was an aberration we could’ve appealed it and we didn’t.

CONCUSSION IN THE AFL

MR: It’s about concussion. Does the AFL do enough to reduce concussion?

GM: Concussion is an area I think we have been leaders on, but we can always learn more and do more. Over the summer the concussion guidelines were changed so it’s an automatic stand down of 12 days instead of six if a player suffers a concussion. On Wednesday, the AFL Commission then signed off a number of decisions.

MR: What are they?

GM: We are in the market for a role which will co-ordinate all the pieces of what we do with concussion, which is education, awareness, prevention, identification and diagnostics and research. We are close to making that appointment. We will be increasing our investment in three areas. We will be spending up to a million dollars a year in research, up from $300,000, whether that be on diagnostics such as mouth guard technology, hit IQ or bio research. The Commission has also signed off on a long-term project, and will be looking at other partners in this, and they’ve committed $2.5 million a year over 10 years.

MR: So your million dollars, plus another $2.5 million?

GM: Per year up to 10 years. And the last piece is we want to talk to the Players Association and other stakeholders to expand their welfare funds, to have a specific hardship/welfare scheme for former players who have suffered head trauma concussions. They are substantive increases in funding.

MR: Why has it taken so long to introduce these increases, Gill?

GM: Every time you increase funding, everyone can say that. We’ve been tipping a lot of money into research for a long time. I don’t think it’s reasonable to ask: why are we doing it now? It’s a leading amount of investment in an area we continue to learn more and when we do we step up.

MR: They key word for me is prevention. We have to try to reduce concussion on the field. Again, the AFL had an opportunity to send a really strong message after the Zac Williams hit. You commit all these millions for concussion, yet only give him one week for an illegal bump to the head.

GM: We all have views about a specific incident, but in terms of prevention to your point, you can go back to the early 2000s and we made the head sacrosanct. We’ve got decades worth of rule changes, including strict liability on bumps. We got huge negative pushback from the football industry about how tough our rules have been about protecting the head. I feel we have been clear in our position. Concussion is something we take very seriously.

MR: Did you read the coroner’s comments on Shane Tuck, which was in the Herald Sun this week? He was basically saying, or asking, does the AFL put profits ahead of the safety of players?

GM: All I’ll say is we continue to encourage players to donate their brains and we will work with the coroner’s court to learn as much as we can. I’m not going to comment on the specifics.

MR: What do you say to concussion campaigner Peter Jess who says the AFL has been slow to move on concussion?

GM: I have regular dialogue with Peter. He knows we take it seriously but we don’t agree on everything. That’s part of what you learn about this space, there are different views. There are a lot of people we talk to with differences of views and that’s part of the challenge.

MR: Do you personally believe there is a strong link, or at least a link, between concussion and CTE?

GM: My response is I take the medical advice seriously. It’s not something I can comment on. At all times we take the best medical advice knowing that it differs.

THE CHALLENGES OF 2020

MR: Was the Grand Final announcement to return to a 2.30pm start a decision about returning to normality?

GM: It had been an unbelievably difficult year for our supporters, in particularly in Victoria last year, and for us to be playing football and next week be able to go. there’s such excitement to get back to football and get back to our rituals and for so many people get back to our way of life. For all the merits of a night Grand Final, there was sense of getting back to our rituals and normality.

MR: Can you remember how you were feeling this time last year?

GM: They were extraordinary times. We were suddenly, out of nowhere, asking: ‘would the season go ahead?’ It was around this time, today or tomorrow, when we reduced the season from 22 rounds to 17. As you know, there were massive decisions in the coming days about starting the season and then to stop it.

MR: Who was the person who introduced ‘agile and flexible’ to the vernacular?

GM: It would’ve appeared somewhere in notes or it jumped into my head early. I don’t know who the mother or father was, but it started early and then it was persistent.

MR: Last year took a toll on everyone, but we’ll stick to football and you personally. I was told you lost between 10 and 15 kilograms throughout the season. How big of a toll did it take on you?

GM: It was difficult for everyone.

MR: It was, but this is about you.

GM: I lost a fair bit of weight, but I needed to. Part of that was stress, part of that was I needed to, part of that was I tried to get fitter, part of that was I was eating less. So, it was stressful because you feel the weight of responsibility to our industry and to our 11 million supporters.

MR: Over the summer, what did you do to de-stress? Was it down the farm in the Otways or down the other peninsula?

GM: I took a lot of January off. I took the longest break I had had and I hung out with family and friends between the farm and we rented a place down at the beach for a while. It was great. A lot of fishing with my kids and beers with mates.

MR: What sort of fish did you catch?

THE TASMANIA DEBATE

GM: I’m going to give my son a pat. Four years ago we put 500 rainbow trout in the big dam at the farm and he caught a 42cm rainbow which is a good fish.

MR: There’s good fishing in Tassie, too. In your heart of hearts, do you want a team in Tassie?

GM: I’ve always been clear that I think Tasmanians deserve a team.

MR: Deserve or want?

GM: Tasmanians deserve a team, but it doesn’t mean everything we want we get. There’s always been challenges but the premier and the industry is now saying this is the moment to have a proper look at this. Where the Commission lands I’m making no comment on. All I will say is it’s a proud football state with its own challenges about why it hasn’t had a team historically. It will be reviewed again.

MR: I will ask again, do you want a Tassie team? Are you allowed to have a personal opinion?

GM: You know the answer to that. My responsibilities are wide and varied as they are to every aspect of this game. My personal view is important but not relevant. I can only answer that they deserve a team, but there’s a lot of issues at play and the process will play out.

MR: I’d say your personal opinion is relevant. I would think the people of Tasmania would really like your personal opinion.

GM: I’m answering the best way I can. There’s a lot of other things at play beyond deserving of a team.

MR: People who criticised the new man-on-the-mark rule are going to look pretty silly in my opinion. The rule has helped ball movement and helped spread the ground.

GM: From what we’ve seen, it looks like there is more spread and that’s because the players can pick options down the middle. It’s early, but it’s encouraging.

MR: Tip please? You’re allowed to pick a premiership winner aren’t you?

GM: If you have to choose a team to win for your life, I think you have to choose Richmond again.

MR: The challenger?

GM: Port Adelaide. They feel they have improved from last year. I think Aliir Aliir is important in their structure, they’ve got a couple of forwards who are getting older, but they have Todd Marshall, and Mitch Georgiades might be able to help Charlie Dixon, they have got a young midfield, I reckon they feel they are emerging.

MR: Have a great year and we’ll only panic when you start using “agile” and “flexible” again.

GM: Let’s hope I don’t have to use them.

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