Craig Kelly: Pin-up pie to AFL man of influence
CRAIG Kelly’s rise from rugged Collingwood premiership defender to AFL powerbroker has been inexorably linked with Gillon McLachlan’s ascension to league boss. Here’s his story.
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CRAIG Kelly was beaming with pride when he slipped into the back of a packed press conference at AFL House in April 2014.
His great mate Gillon McLachlan had just been unveiled as the AFL’s chief executive officer, a decade and a half after walking through the door as a star strategic planner under league boss Wayne Jackson.
The rises of Kelly, 52, and McLachlan, 45 — the two most powerful men in Australian rules football — have been inexorably linked.
EMAILS REVEAL RAPPORT BETWEEN AFL BOSS AND PLAYER AGENT
CRAIG KELLY’S SON WILL ON COLLINGWOOD’S RADAR
Both hail from Jackson’s home state of South Australia and share a love of horses and the land.
Kelly’s big break came in the mid 1990s when, backed by the AFL, he formed player management company Pro Squad to head off Ricky Nixon’s Club 10 venture.
The company became Elite Sports Properties, where McLachlan’s younger brother Hamish — later thrust into a key Channel 7 commentary role — sat on the board and worked for several years in the events department, helping establishing its polo division.
Another rising star to cut his teeth at ESP in those early days was Richard Simkiss, the AFL commercial operations chief axed last year alongside league football boss Simon Lethlean over inappropriate relationships with junior female staff members.
As many of the game’s best players signed on with Kelly, the company began securing AFL contracts, including an official memorabilia licence.
ESP was bought out by US company TLA Worldwide three years ago — with Kelly staying at the helm — and they now manage the AFL Grand Final eve luncheon at Crown casino, Grand Final week live site at Yarra Park, Brownlow after-party at Club 23 and VIP September Club where corporates are wined and dined during and after the premiership decider.
Even last year’s commemorative Richmond premiership beer cans were put on shelves with the help of TLA.
ANGST over Kelly’s “special relationship” with the AFL flared last month after it was revealed TLA was negotiating to commercialise the elite under-18 TAC Cup competition.
“Ned (Kelly) is great at what he does, and may well be the right person to run all of them, but there’s just no transparent bidding process,” a rival industry figure said.
“If it was a public company or a government department they would have to go through a rigid process.”
The ties that bind are everywhere.
A foundation client of ESP was former Olympic swimmer Nicole Livingstone, named by McLachlan last November as the head of AFLW.
Kelly’s old housemate and premiership teammate Michael Christian was appointed as the AFL match review officer a month later.
More than 250 of the AFL’s 800 players are in the TLA stable, along with most of the senior coaches, including Nathan Buckley, Adam Simpson, Chris Scott, Brad Scott, Stuart Dew, Simon Goodwin, Leon Cameron and Alan Richardson.
In the football media, TLA represents movers and shakers Garry Lyon, Luke Darcy, Anthony Hudson, Mark Ricciuto, Jonathan Brown, Matthew Lloyd, Dwayne Russell, Kane Cornes, Mark Howard, Leigh Montagna, Tony Shaw and Hamish McLachlan.
Former Cat and TLA client James Podsiadly has also been employed by the AFL and is part of a team overseeing radical rules changes for next year.
THE emergence today of Kelly’s role in organising a gift for McLachlan to mark his 40th birthday in 2013, shines a fresh light on the extent of their relationship.
The party was a cowboy-and-Indian themed party at McLachlan’s Birregurra property, 40km northwest of Lorne, that continued deep into the night.
“Ned and Gill are pretty tight,” a mutual friend said this week.
Kelly’s confliction was on show two years ago when the AFL and the union representing the game’s 820 players faced off during tense pay negotiations.
At a meeting of 40 player agents and AFL Players’ Association boss Paul Marsh at Victoria Park, Kelly broke ranks and declared that the players should never strike.
He urged the union to reach a deal without the threat of players walking off the job, prompting fellow managers to accuse him of being too close to the league.
“Being a farmer from way back, I am fundamentally opposed to a strike — and the word strike,” Kelly explained to the Herald Sun at the time.
“I believe with the right conversations and the right information being shared openly, we should be able to get an outcome for the clubs, the players and the AFL.
“If the parties can’t reach an agreement there are better ways in which you can get your point across and not penalise the fans or the game.”
Asked about suggestions TLA was too close to the AFL, Kelly said: “We are commercially close to the AFL, but so are the players, so is every club and so is the AFLPA.
“What we’ve got to understand is that we are not like the United States. We are a small market and we all need to work together to support our corporate partners, grow the game and the players must be recognised in that pie.
“And if anyone wants to have a look at the amount of money that we (TLA) have generated and provided to players and the AFL, in growing activities and events that didn’t exist 10 or 15 years ago, then by all means come and sit down and I’ll show you the numbers.
“This organisation has contributed as much as it has been paid over the journey.”
RUGGED DEFENDER TO LEADING PLAYER AGENT
KELLY was a rugged defender during his 122-game AFL career and a member of Collingwood’s famed 1990 premiership team.
He made headlines for the wrong reasons in his twilight days, pinching several opposition players including Hawthorn great Jason Dunstall and Geelong superstar Gary Ablett Snr, before retiring in 1996.
On the Ablett pinching incident, Kelly said years later: “The following week I was playing on (Tony) Lockett and I didn’t go anywhere near him.”
Ablett was scathing in his 2007 book, saying: “I didn’t have a lot of time for Craig Kelly. He came across as being very arrogant ... Just pinching all day. I said to him ‘Craig, I don’t have any time for this s--t’. I don’t hate him, but I don’t respect him as a player.”
Kelly’s premiership captain Tony Shaw this week recalled: “Ned had a bit of white-line fever, he was tough but very skilled, too, he was a beautiful kick.
“He went up against some pretty big forwards but he’s a different businessman to what his on-field persona was. He’s stayed out of the limelight in a lot of ways in setting it up (ESP).
“He wanted to be successful and made sure he had good contacts straight after footy, and he played the game, but he does it well. He employs good people and he’s a ripping bloke.”
A veteran news reporter said Kelly gave a glimpse of his future in post-game interviews by often agreeing to speak if a plug was given to an upcoming club function. These days he rarely answers journalists’ calls.
Kelly worked briefly in the Magpies’ marketing department while still playing, before setting up Pro Squad and then ESP with Olympic swimmer Rob Woodhouse.
The pair hit the jackpot for the first time in the early 2000s by selling the business for $17.5 million to a buyer that soon went bankrupt — buying it back “Kerry Packer-Alan Bond style” for $2m.
But Kelly insists he knows first-hand the pain of hardship.
In an interview with the Herald Sun six years ago, he opened up on the loss of his family’s 1000ha farm an hour north of Adelaide.
“We had a beautiful property with two beautiful houses on it … (but) by 1990 we had lost the whole farm,’’ he said.
“Interest rates went from nine to 19 per cent and my mum and dad started a business that went bad. We just went belly up.”
He had his own financial difficulties when the economy crashed after the 1990 flag — learning lessons that would help drive his path to the top of the football world.
“I bought a Ford Maverick 4WD, a house in Charles St, Abbotsford, and I paid $121,000 for it and then interest rates went from 9 to 19 per cent,” Kelly said.
“(The bank manager) said ‘What the f--k are you doing’, and ripped shreds off me.
“You have to lose it to appreciate having it. You don’t want to put yourself in that situation again. It drives you to want to get it right.”
Kelly and Woodhouse cashed in again in March 2015 when TLA Worldwide bought ESP in a deal worth up to $25.5m, while a more recent takeover of rival management company Stride Sports again bolstered their market domination.
KELLY and McLachlan also played roles in the admission of female members to the once all-male Carbine Club.
In 2015, McLachlan threatened to cut the AFL’s ties with the club’s post Brownlow Medal lunch at Crown casino unless it agreed to affirmative action.
The following year it was Livingstone and Richmond president Peggy O’Neal who emerged as its first female members, backed by several members including Kelly.
Another industry figure Kelly called upon to help pay for the London plane trees that now line the drive to McLachlan’s farm was journeyman chief executive and former Magpie Gary Pert.
Pert’s 10-year reign as Collingwood boss ended after a review of the club’s operations last July, but he shocked the industry by being named as Demon chief executive Peter Jackson’s replacement in June.
McLachlan visited Pert’s Noosa holiday house during a getaway last October.
Lethlean, who lasted just a few months in the AFL football operations job and is now at St Kilda, has also been a long-time member of Kelly’s inner-circle.
He met Kelly while playing at VAFA powerhouse Old Xaverians and was an opponent of McLachlan — and state teammate — during Gill’s days as a ruckman at Uni Blues.
As the AFL grappled with the Essendon drugs inferno, Kelly’s go-to man for a legal crisis, criminal lawyer Tony Hargreaves, emerged as the Bombers’ trusted legal counsel working alongside spin doctor Liz Lukin and interim Dons chief executive Ray Gunston, who have since been appointed to senior roles at the AFL by McLachlan.
Curiously, Hargreaves went on to represent the Essendon 34 on behalf of the AFLPA in their fight to clear their name.
KELLY’S CONTENTIOUS PLAN TO OVERHAUL TAC CUP
DISGRUNTLED rival agents last week sought answers from the AFLPA, which regulates player managers, over Kelly’s contentious TAC Cup plans.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission said it was unable to discuss a formal complaint lodged by concerned agents.
Veteran manager Peter Jess has called on AFL commission chairman Richard Goyder to step in and investigate.
“My main concern is the complete lack of transparency in the dealings between TLA and the AFL,” Jess said.
“The fact that you can have an agent come in and control a primary part of the AFL talent pathway beggars belief.”
Former North Melbourne powerbroker and ex- agent Ron Joseph said it was “staggering” plans to overhaul the crucial under 18s system weren’t put to a committee.
Prominent agent Liam Pickering declared last month: “Parents read the papers, kids read the papers. They think ‘We’ll sign with TLA, they run the comp, I’m more chance of getting drafted’.”
Lukin did not respond to questions about whether TLA had tendered for any of its lucrative AFL contracts, but as another industry figure mused: “Why does the AFL even need to outsource the TAC Cup? Sports administration is what they are meant to do.”
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