New Geelong president Craig Drummond opens up about his love for the club and what the future holds
Craig Drummond has big shoes to fill as Geelong’s new president, but the mad Cats fan has bold plans of making sure the club carries on as an AFL powerhouse.
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Craig Drummond remembers huddling under his covers as a kid in Leongatha listening to Geelong’s night matches on a radio gifted to him by his father.
When his work took him to Sydney for almost five years in the mid-2000s, he found that flame had continued to burn.
He still found himself travelling on the plane to the watch the Cats via Avalon Airport more weeks of the AFL season than not.
Football has a way of getting into your blood that you cannot shake no matter the impediment.
It is why the 59-year-old had no hesitation taking up the Geelong board’s offer of the club’s presidency when it became apparent Colin Carter was stepping down last year.
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The chief executive of private health insurance provider Medibank Private – with a glittering resume at companies including NAB, JBWere and Merrill Lynch (Australia) – could easily find hobbies for the estimated 25-30 hours he spends a month on Geelong’s board and finance committee.
Yet with Geelong having given him so much joy these past decades, taking a role to continue the club’s status as an AFL powerhouse was an elementary decision.
“My mother was a Geelong supporter and my earliest memories are of listening to the Cats on the radio that I got from my father,” he told the Herald Sun this week.
“The lights weren’t that good and they were using a red Sherrin and the ball would go into dark spots and the commentators weren’t always sure who actually had the ball.
“But I have been passionate ever since and having been on the board since 2011 in the four and a half years I lived in Sydney I probably averaged 15 games a year, so that gives you an indication as to the degree of passion.
“You have to be very passionate about the club and very passionate about the game.”
Drummond is set to continue in the footsteps of Frank Costa and Carter as presidents who will combine the club’s laid-back charms and surf coast sensibility with a razor-sharp business mind.
Already he is adamant Geelong hires elite football administrators and then lets them do their job, unlikely to be tricked into commenting on Jeremy Cameron’s hamstring issues or Chris Scott’s selection tactics.
What he is clear on is this: Geelong has no intention of going quietly into the night, intent on winning premierships in the near future as a club that wants 100,000 members by 2025 and has a 40,000-capacity stadium by 2023.
BRIAN COOK’S FUTURE
Drummond says Brian Cook’s astonishingly successful tenure as Geelong chief executive will finish this year, ending a stint that dates back to 1999.
Yet the Cats plan to keep him around as long as they can in an alternative capacity.
“We are very keen to make sure Brian stays around at the club once his CEO tenure ends at the end of 2021,” he says.
“We are very keen to have Brian in an active paid role around the club.
“Our key stakeholder, our members and our executive love the man and what he stands for.
“There will be a transition at the end of 2021 to a new CEO. The board isn’t in a hurry just yet to go down that path (of who replaces him) but there will be a process and we will look at a range of candidates internal and external.”
Former Australian cricket boss James Sutherland, on the Cats board since 2019, would shape as an obvious internal candidate.
HAS GEELONG GONE ALL IN?
Geelong’s costly recruitment of Jeremy Cameron as well as securing Shaun Higgins, 33 in March, means the Cats will have 13 players on their list 29 and older by Round 1.
Yet they snaffled a trio of 2021 second-round picks in the Cameron trade and still have 21 players on that same list who are 23 and under.
“When you look at Chris Scott and Simon Lloyd and Stephen Wells, we will back them and their judgment in,” Drummond said.
“We have had an ability over the last 10 or 15 years to create an environment where men and women want to come to the Geelong footy club.
“I am really optimistic about the quality of the young players we have but we also attracted senior players at the right time through the years.
“I am hopeful if we continue to create the right environment, there isn’t any reason we can’t continue to attract more mature-aged players on top of the younger talent we have.
“I am optimistic this isn’t just a one or two-year build and I appreciate some commentators think we have gone all out in the window but with the talent we have got, we have some outstanding young men and women at our club.”
A HAPPY HUB LIFE
Gary Rohan’s relationship with a Geelong staffer who has now left the club — as rumours bubbled all year — meant it was easy to drag the Cats into the competitive-wide narrative about hub life.
Yet Drummond says Geelong’s culture shone through as the club tackled months on the road in various states before falling 60 minutes short of the AFL premiership.
“When we started the 2020 year people didn’t have lofty expectations for the Geelong Football Club on the field and Chris Scott and his team showed pretty exemplary behaviour through hub life in their standards and it reflected very well on the field,” he said.
“We were very proud of how the team behaved at all times. The group has got some pretty mature heads up there.
“Colin and Cooky spend quite a bit of time in the hub but the team were exemplary.
“We were very proud of what they were able to achieve, albeit we didn’t ultimately take home the silverware.”
THE ELUSIVE HOME FINALS
“Most teams choose where they play their home games and we would like to play our home games at Geelong,” Drummond said.
“With a capacity of 40,000 or thereabouts it gives us a pretty good argument.
“There are many grounds around the country where the capacity is less than 40,000 — GWS is a good example — and they host home finals, so 40,000 is starting to get closer to the capacity of Adelaide Oval and even Marvel Stadium.”
The club has secured $142 million of funding for the final stage works on a new two-tier 14,000 seat grandstand which will replace the Ford Stand and Ablett Terrace at the northern end of the venue.
“We are hopeful it starts in October and hopefully it would be finished by May 2023,” he said.
“I couch those dates because they are not final, but we would be looking at one full season out where capacity would go down to 26,000.”
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