Michael Warner: Why Gary Pert can’t spin his way out of Melbourne Demons’ ‘sh--show’ despite reviews

Melbourne fans welcomed news this week the club would be conducting a full review of the club, but MICHAEL WARNER unpacks why it’s unlikely to find the source of the Dees’ problems.

Buried away in a Supreme Court affidavit is a claim that Melbourne chief executive Gary Pert can get football journalists “to run with anything I want”.

“The one thing I can do is control the media, I can control the media and the messaging, that is the one thing I can do,” Pert is said to have declared amid the murky exit of Demons’ president Glen Bartlett in April 2021.

But surely not even Pert can spin his way out of the latest Melbourne sh--show.

Revelations on Channel 7 on Sunday night that the board had backflipped and agreed to an “external review” into its operations, led by All Blacks leadership consultant Darren Shand, were met with applause by frustrated Demons fans.

At least until the Herald Sun’s Jay Clark revealed an hour later that Pert and interim Demons president Brad Green would sit alongside Shand on the review panel, which makes it about as external as your intestines.

Departed Melbourne president Kate Roffey and CEO Gary Pert in 2022 with the Premiership Cup. Photo by Michael Klein

There’s a sense that Pert and the club’s top brass believe they can survive the fallout from another season of hell due to Kate Roffey’s decision to walk away on Friday night.

Pert, we are told, successfully completed an internal review at the end of season 2020, resulting in a glorious premiership.

It’s a good line, but overlooks the fact that Pert’s review also triggered legal action from the club’s long-time doctor Zeeshan Arain, who was sacked just days after blowing the whistle on the club’s alleged cultural problems.

When Bartlett became aware of Dr Arain’s allegations an investigation was launched, resulting in a six-figure payout to the doctor before a group of plotters inside and outside the club turned their guns on the president – igniting a three-year legal battle that continues to rip the club apart today.

Green is admired by Dees supporters, but has been on the club’s board since November 2020.

Shand, too, is already familiar with the club having spent time with senior Demons figures in the past 12 months.

Will Melbourne’s review find the source of the problem if Gary Pert is still calling the shots, asks Michael Warner? Picture: Michael Klein

So who appointed the review panel and what are its terms of reference?

And why should Pert, the man who recently got it so incredibly and wildly wrong when he declared that Melbourne’s culture was “the best I’ve seen in 40 years” – despite a litany of off-field incidents – be anywhere near the review?

It was footy’s version of Bob Hawke’s “no Australian child will be living in poverty”.

The saga continued on Monday evening with the news that the man identified as Roffey’s long-term replacement, former Melbourne Cricket Club president Steven Smith, had declined an offer to join the board.

The culture can at Melbourne has been kicked down the road for years and only a genuinely independent, warts-and-all review – one that may well find the CEO has been a part of the problem – can get to the bottom of the mess at the Demons.