Robbie Slater goes one-on-one with Former Central Coast Mariners owner Richard Peil

Richard Peil decision to walk away from the A-League shocked everyone. ROBBIE SLATER finds out what really happened in an exclusive Q&A with the former Central Coast owner.

Socceroos legend Robbie Slater sits down with former Central Coast Mariners owner Richard Peil to talk about his shock decision to quit the A-League, the lost millions of the previous APL administration, the ongoing war with Football Australia and why the Matildas won’t survive if support isn’t forthcoming for the women’s league.

Robbie Slater: I was shocked when you pulled out of the Mariners. Tell me about that decision and are you missing it?

Richard Peil: I forged very, very good friendships with the coaching staff at the Mariners. I spoke on a daily basis with (coach) Mark Jackson, (Sporting Director) Matt Simon is a very close friend, (captain) Danny Vukovic. I have massive respect for (women’s coach) Emily Husband. I am missing the day-to-day conversations but I’ve got to be honest in telling you that I’m not missing signing cheques every week. Business is booming for me and I’m now making money again as opposed to just spending it, so that part is pretty good.

Richard Peil, middle, after the Mariners-Adelaide United clash in May. Picture: Scott Gardiner/Getty Images

RS: Was the reduction in the distribution money (from $2.35m down to $540,000) from the TV deal the final straw? Do you feel the A-League is positioned to survive the next few years?

RP: I think they’ve got the leadership right. Stephen Conroy is doing an amazing job and they’ve brought great people onto the board in Rob Morrison and particularly Gino (Marra) from Macarthur. It’s a shame that they weren’t handed the keys to the car 12 months earlier before the previous administration had spent the $140 million from Silver Lake. They’ve done a really good job on this year’s launch on a shoestring budget. If they would have been left with even $40m of that $140m you would be seeing a really, really strong future for the next couple of years.

RS: Should there have been an audit when all that money disappeared?

RP: I don’t know why a forensic audit wasn’t done. I certainly would have appreciated it and believed that it should have been uncovered exactly where the money was spent. And we know about the debacle of the money spent on the app (KeepUp) that’s not even being used. The first week that I came into the chairman’s role at the Mariners I questioned the strategy of trying to develop a digital platform like that and I gave examples of other organisations around the world that had spent substantially more than $50 million trying to do the same thing, and it failed miserably. I don’t think it was that hard to predict that trying to build a digital platform was at best, the toss of a coin play. Let’s say $40m (was spent on KeepUp). Imagine if that’d have been split up between 12 or 13 clubs giving them $2.8m to invest in youth development, to build facilities, build grounds, build artificial pitches. I certainly could have done with that money as opposed to it going to a digital platform.

Peil has walked away from the club. Picture: Scott Gardiner/Getty Images

RS: What do you see as the biggest threat to the future of the A-League?

RP: I think the biggest threat is Football Australia. I think if you have a look at their policies and the decisions and strategies that they’ve made, even just the last few months, to me not only do they not support the future of the independent professional league, I think you could view it as trying to compete directly.

RS: To clarify they’ve announced a “second tier” competition that runs at the same time as the A-League and now a promise to set up Academies in direct competition with what the A-League clubs were mandated to do, which was start their own Academies.

RP: Why would they try and pull players away from us instead of doing what many of us have spoken about, and that is getting support from Football Australia to develop the best young players. Why would they set up in competition again? You can look at that and go, ‘well, they want to compete against the A-League teams’. The A-League teams can only survive in Australia by developing the best young talents, getting them playing first team football, and then selling them overseas. Now if they set up their own academy I’m assuming that some of the best players are going to definitely be attracted to that (instead). And does that mean the A-League clubs are going to miss out on the desperately needed transfer fees too … it’s taking money out of the owners and clubs who have put tens of millions of dollars into Australian football.

The B-League I am confidently going to predict will be on free-to-air TV. Now, if you are a company owner who has done well in business and you want to support Australian football and you want to put your name on the front of a shirt, having that name on the front of a shirt on free-to-air TV is going to be attractive. The quote from (FA CEO) James Johnson that it’s meant to expand and attract more sponsorship I just don’t believe that. In the short term, all you’re doing is most likely taking away potential sponsors or sponsors from A-League clubs.

Football Australia CEO James Johnson at the 2026 Women's Asian Cup dates, venues announcements. Picture: Football Australia.

Let me be really clear. I have no issue with competition. I actually believe at the right time a B-League would strengthen the production of players in the Australian domestic market. So it’s not specifically the competition, it’s the timing of it. We know that clubs have gone from $2.35m down to $2m now down to $530,000. It is going to be that way for another couple of seasons so why would you launch a competitive league that’s most likely going to take sponsorship dollars away from A-League clubs at the time when the A-League clubs are at (an) all-time low in money that they’re getting from the governing body.

The other thing that pisses me off is when I hear these political statements where James Johnson said the relationship between the APL and Football Australia has never been stronger. I just wish people would say it how it is because I don’t believe that. I even saw a quote saying that the A-League clubs were consulted in the second division. I was never approached from anyone from Football Australia to ask me my opinion on the second league.

RS: When you look back and now that you’re out of it you can say, do you believe there should have ever been a divorce? And in hindsight do you think football should be married again?

RP: Look, I didn’t go through the pain that many of the others went through previous to the divorce. So my opinion probably isn’t as educated as most people on this. I know for a fact I was able to walk away from the game because of my unique circumstances. I know for a fact that there are a number of other owners if they could, they probably would walk away from the game right now. And I think those same owners would probably say that having the marriage back together wouldn’t be such a bad thing. But again, I want to say, my opinion is biased on this because all I’ve seen is the debacle of the wasting of tens of millions of dollars by the guys that the keys were given to when the separation happened. So I’ve only seen the bad side of what’s happened.

Central Coast’s Peta Trimis in action during the round four A-League Women's match last week. Picture: Brendon Thorne/Getty Images

RS: The broadcast deal is up next year, what do you think going forward is the best that we can hope for?

RP: If you combine the fact that the grant (the club distribution) is probably not going to go back up to $2.35m, and I’m very confident that it’s not, then you combine that with the fact that there’s a national B-League that is most likely going to be on free-to-air, that is going to take some sponsorship away from the A-League teams. And you combine that with the academies that Football Australia want to put together, which is most likely going to take a future transfer money away from there from A-League clubs. I mean how does all that stack up?

RS: Do you think Football Australia will have a deal with Ten and Paramount for B-League games to be on free to air?

RP: I can tell you that James Johnson himself told me that he was fighting for the A-League to get more free-to-air slots this year. That hasn’t happened. Now I’m guessing that those free-to-air spots are most likely going to go to the B-League as opposed to helping the A-League. Call me sceptical. Football Australia had leverage when they were negotiating this deal for the Matildas and Socceroos to help the A-League. If they genuinely wanted to help the A-League, I believe they had leverage.

RS: Two-and-a-half years at the coalface of Australian football, you spent over $7 million to make an impact. How do you feel now when you look back?

RP: I’ve got some fricken good memories from spending that $7m. Was it worth $7 million? Probably not. It’s a lot of Ferraris, but the memories of winning five trophies, doing the Treble, winning that first grand final against all odds with the youngest team, smallest budget. Watching skilled people like Nick Montgomery, Surge, Mark Jackson, Danny Schofield. Had I not done it and I was sitting here today still just watching football I would have regretted that more. My journey with football is done. There just needs to be some changes and firstly, Football Australia need, in my opinion, to work much closer with the A-League to help clubs. Football Australia are the only people that can monetise investment into the women’s game today and they have the number one sporting brand in Australia in the Matildas. But they need players to continue to be developed at the coalface to continue having that number one brand. And that expense should not be burdened to the people funding A-League clubs. Football Australia needs to give some sort of distribution back to the A-League clubs to help us make female players closer to full-time. To help us get better for city facilities, especially for the smaller clubs, because I personally have put close to $900,000 into the women’s game. I never had a chance of getting that money back because there is no transfer system. The only people who can monetise the development of women players is Football Australia. Yet they have not offered any help to the Mariners to develop our female players.

RS: Tell us about the documentary, real insight into the club and the way you guys worked.

RP: It’s been received really, really well, they have done an amazing job. The reality is it doesn’t show the 50 to 60 hours a week behind the scenes that I had to do to create the environment for us to be a successful club. But how do you show that on film? So am I happy with the product? I think it’s an amazing product. In 50 years time I will have a documentary that I can show the grandkids. I love the sport, I love the people that I’ve met through it and I’m not done yet. I just need some change before I can justify to my wife why I am spending millions of dollars on a sport.

Originally published as Robbie Slater goes one-on-one with Former Central Coast Mariners owner Richard Peil