AFL 2023: Will the AFL replace Gillon McLachlan with Disney exec Kylie Watson-Wheeler?
Is it finally time to break up the ultimate boys club? Eddie McGuire and a host of others give their take on how a female CEO would go.
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A year ago, the question was first raised when Gillon McLachlan flagged his departure and it has bubbled away in the background ever since.
Then, as the process to appoint the AFL’s new CEO lingered on and on and on, it became obvious the Commission were wrestling with something.
It took a late acceptance of an invitation to the lavish Gather Round dinner at the prestigious Magill Estate winery to let the cat, or should it be bulldog in this case, out of the bag.
Kylie Watson-Wheeler was supposed to be the guest speaker for the VAFA season launch but the Western Bulldogs president was a late cancellation, instead flying to Adelaide to sip pinot noir with the powerbrokers who were about to make one of the biggest decisions in AFL history.
Once word got out, the chatter at the exclusive event soon turned to a question many hadn’t really considered seriously before: Is the AFL ready for a female CEO?
Watson-Wheeler had been mentioned in dispatches in the early days but most of the talk in recent months had centred around AFL executives Andrew Dillon and Travis Auld, and Richmond CEO Brendan Gale.
It was thought she was content running The Walt Disney Company’s Australian and New Zealand arm, along with steering the Bulldogs back into the premiership equation.
But many smelt a rat as the Commission kept extending out McLachlan’s leaving date with the love for Watson-Wheeler, particularly by chairman Richard Goyder, gaining momentum after she had a change of heart and agreed to take part in the interview process.
It was during this where the whole female discussion became a thing. A look around all the major sports, in this country and globally, shows they haven’t been able to make the leap.
The two other biggest sports in Australia are run by men, the NRL and Cricket Australia, while overseas the NBA, NFL, NHL, Major League Baseball and English Premier League are all male dominated in the top jobs.
Is Kylie Watson-Wheeler the new frontier?
“Do you think Disney is putting a d**khead into that job? They could put anyone in the world into that job,” is one take from an AFL executive, pointing to Watson-Wheeler’s business nous.
“If it is someone really well credentialed then no-one cares in my view. It’s not male or female, it’s about the bona fides of the person and she is used to dealing at the top end, the high end of business so dealing with Prime Ministers and the like wouldn’t faze her.”
The AFL has been slow moving on the female leadership front. North Melbourne’s recently appointed CEO Jen Watt is only the second woman to hold that position after a failed experiment at Hawthorn with Tracey Gaudry, which lasted five months back in 2017.
There are now three female AFL Commissioners – Helen Milroy, Gabrielle Trainor and Simone Wilkie.
Three women are on the league’s executive, including head of commercial Kylie Rogers, who has also been interviewed for McLachlan’s job.
Peggy O’Neal broke the glass at Richmond, becoming the first female AFL club president in 2013, going on to lead the Tigers to three premierships before retiring last year.
She blazed the trail for women at club land with three female presidents now in place – Dr Sonja Hood (North Melbourne), Kate Roffey (Melbourne) and Watson-Wheeler.
Geelong vice-president Diana Taylor touches on the battles women have faced in the AFL in her recently released book called ‘The Playbook’, an inspirational self-help guide on taking risks to succeed in business and life.
Taylor is a lawyer and company director who has been around football for 23 years where she has copped gender discrimination numerous times.
“For me, gender has been a factor in my personal experience because it has been used as a cheap shot for derision in order to ‘put me in my place’ in a meeting room otherwise full of older, white men and it has been seen as a risk because I had not pulled on a boot,” Taylor writes.
“Was I going to leave an organisation after a period of investment to have children and was I going to get emotional and break under pressure – seemingly female traits?
“None of these matters have ever been directly put to me of course. They never are. It is always easier to operate on the basis of assumption and myth when the decision maker is trying to achieve a safer outcome.”
When asked this week about the Watson-Wheeler developments, Taylor was excited: “I absolutely think this industry is ready, willing, waiting and wants more female leadership in the system and that’s across the system from community right through to the elite level.
“What we need to do as an industry is we need to remove gender as a risk element in decision making.
“And the other thing we need to do, is we need to place careful and heavy emphasis on people’s previous experience and their skill. see that experience outside of footy as actually a competitive advantage.”
The AFL CEO job is unique in many ways. The business side is obviously important but being the public face of the game is challenging. McLachlan is brilliant at it and the man he replaced, Andrew Demetriou, had an aggressive style which resonated.
“Look at the last three CEO’s, (Wayne) Jackson, Demetriou and McLachlan, they’re very strong front people for the industry,” one club CEO said. “With Kylie, I don’t know her well enough.”
That is a common theme around many powerbrokers in the league. Despite being the Western Bulldogs president for the past two-and-a-half years, they haven’t heard a lot from Watson-Wheeler.
In an interview with Vogue Australia, Waston-Wheeler gave an insight into her thoughts about being a female leader in a male-dominated industry.
“My philosophy has always been, ‘the best person for the job, gets the job,” she said. “It just happens that as a result of that mindset, we’ve ended up organically with a really strong female representation within our business.
“There’s a real open mindedness about people’s skill sets and strengths, and it’s important also to ensure that within the organisation, you have a variety of different perspectives.
“As far as personal challenges, I found it’s always been important to be myself. I’ve learned that the hard way. Even if that has made me different to some male peers, being authentic is far more important than trying to fit a mould.”
So is the AFL about to smash up its own mould, shake up the perceived “boys club” it has been accused of cultivating, and make history by appointing a female CEO?
Former Collingwood president Eddie McGuire is the most connected person in the game and he matter-of-factly sums up how far the AFL industry has progressed: “No one cares. I don’t think it (being female) crosses anyone’s mind.”
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Originally published as AFL 2023: Will the AFL replace Gillon McLachlan with Disney exec Kylie Watson-Wheeler?
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