Replacing Richard Goyder: David Koch, Craig Drummond among contenders to become AFL chairman

David Koch, Craig Drummond and Andrew Demetriou have been touted as potential successors to AFL chairman Richard Goyder. MICHAEL WARNER looks at who is most likely to replace football’s ‘invisible man’.

MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA – NOVEMBER 27: Richard Goyder, Chairman of the AFL speaks during the 2023 W Awards at Crown Palladium on November 27, 2023 in Melbourne, Australia. (Photo by Dylan Burns/AFL Photos

It’s a testament to Richard Goyder’s epic fail in identifying and nurturing his own successor as chairman of the AFL Commission that even former league boss Andrew Demetriou has been touted as a potential candidate by exasperated club presidents in recent days.

Demetriou, whose trainwreck testimony during a 2020 public inquiry into Crown Resort’s fitness to hold a New South Wales casino licence all but ended his corporate career, has been flagged as an option to take charge of the game after Goyder’s tenure ends next year.

And if that wasn’t enough to make you twitch, embattled Carlton president Luke Sayers – the man embroiled in the PwC Australia scandal — has also come across the radar of the AFL Commission’s nominations committee.

Imagine that. A race for Australian sport’s loftiest position between the former head of a company that egregiously breached confidentiality arrangements with the Commonwealth and the once accused “shadow director” of failed vocational group Acquire Learning, which collapsed in 2017 owing creditors almost $145 million.

Other would-be contenders include veteran Port Adelaide president David Koch and former Geelong president Craig Drummond.

The almost unanimous view in clubland is that none of Goyder’s current crop of commissioners is good enough to replace him – other than perhaps Andrew Ireland – in what has been the weakest AFL board of directors since its inception three decades ago.

Goyder has been football’s invisible man since replacing Mike Fitzpatrick as chairman in April 2017.

He stays too long and provides little oversight over his company’s executives, instead falling into the thrall of his celebrity CEOs.

In Goyder’s eyes, Gillon McLachlan and Alan Joyce at Qantas – a board that he also chairs – were golden boys who could do no wrong, no matter the depth of a crisis.

He begged McLachlan to stay on, undermining Andrew Dillon’s run for the job, before making a bizarre 11th-hour play for Western Bulldogs president Kylie Watson-Wheeler.

Dillon is respected by the clubs but would be better served by a hands-on chairman from beyond football’s boys’ club establishment.

Richard Goyder with Andrew Dillon and Andrew Demetriou. Picture: Dylan Burns/AFL Photos via Getty Images

Should Sydney win this year’s AFL premiership, Swans president Andrew Pridham – a strong leader with a commercial background who understands first-hand the struggles of clubs – shapes as the ideal candidate. Pridham is being backed by some heavy hitters, but can he be convinced to do it?

Under Pridham, the commission might have a chance to reclaim its authority and original purpose, days when high-calibre commissioners had proper oversight of the executive’s day-to-day operations.

Indeed, one wonders what it is the AFL commission actually does these days other than rubberstamp decisions and parade its status, wining and dining Australia’s business and political elite at the MCG on grand final day.

Andrew Pridham (right) with Tom Harley. Picture: NCA NewsWire / David Crosling

Goyder and co point to rising crowds, memberships and TV viewers as indicators of the health of the code, but the game is in a mess – both on and off the field.

Senior executives Travis Auld and Kylie Rogers have followed McLachlan out the door, leaving Dillon in charge of an inexperienced management team that has pocketed outrageous average salaries of more than $1.3 million – the same amount Dustin Martin took home in his prime. As one club boss declared this week: “I can’t think of anyone on that executive who is worth half of that.”

The failure to secure Brendon Gale as the 2IC to Dillon was also a major blunder.

Laura Kane is in the hot seat as head of football operations and needs better support amid growing unease over the hastily re-struck holding the ball rule, the draft’s points bidding system and the state of umpiring generally.

David Koch with Travis Boak. Picture: Michael Willson/AFL Media/Getty Images

Carlton president Luke Sayers.

And whatever happened to the laws of the game committee, where wise old heads got together to consider the unintended consequences of rule changes?

The AFL’s “Opening Round” experiment has compounded the unfairness of the fixture (and must surely be reworked next year).

Concussion, the Tasmanian stadium dilemma and Sport Integrity Australia’s probe into the league’s illicit drugs policy are further issues of concern.

The farcical Hawthorn racism saga – an ongoing mess largely of the AFL’s own making – and Melbourne’s simmering boardroom war with former president Glen Bartlett also remain unresolved.

NRL supremo Peter V’landys was once mocked by his Victorian rivals, but he is closing the gap in the code wars. His own opening round gambit in Las Vegas was a winner, while his ambitious rejuvenation of NSW racing showed what left-field thinking can do as others become complacent.

The AFL is screaming out for an active chairman such as Pridham where good governance and a sharpening of Dillon’s executive will take precedence over cheerleading and divisive woke agendas.