New era begins at Adelaide Football Club with new CEO Andrew Fagan and rookie coach Phil Walsh
IF it was politically correct to refer to anything at Adelaide by events at Alberton, the storylines with new Crows chiefs Andrew Fagan and Phil Walsh would be easier to present as history repeating.
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IF it was politically correct to refer to anything at the Adelaide Football Club by events at Alberton, the storyline to emerge with new Crows chief executive Andrew Fagan and new coach Phil Walsh would be easier to present as history repeating.
Bob McLean and Fos Williams formed the most-imposing administrator-coach combination in SA club and state football from the 1950s to the early 1970s. As a partnership — that is recognised in the Australian Football Hall of Fame — none has been more successful nor more solid. And each crossed enormous cultural divides ... just as Fagan and Walsh have done in the past month to form a once-unimaginable link at West Lakes.
Fagan, 43, comes from rugby, direct from the ARU headquarters in Sydney after 12 years with the Canberra Brumbies. He had the world at his feet. Walsh, 54, has defected from Port Adelaide where he drenched himself in the deep Power-Crows rivalry more than most. He has turned his world upside down.
Fagan’s appointment as Adelaide’s third chief executive defied — just on face value — everything expected of Steven Trigg’s successor. While it was well noted that in the 107 applicants for the job there were international applicants — including a most-appealing candidate in London — the external view was the Crows would not stray far the prototype of someone with strong roots in SA football.
After the fact — one called in mid-September in the wake of Adelaide sacking coach Brenton Sanderson — Fagan appears everything the newly independent Crows board wanted, if not needed. This is despite no background in Australian Football — and no SANFL allegiances, either to a club or the Crows’ former owners at league headquarters.
“I come in completely devoid of baggage, associations and partnerships,” he says.
Fagan is the clean skin at a club wanting to shed the bruising it has taken since September 2012 when it confessed to that dirty sin with key forward-ruckman Kurt Tippett’s dodgy contract. He is a novice in a sport that is not always kind to outsiders. And he is working hand-in-hand with a first-time senior coach.
“It is very rare that a CEO and a senior coach get to start at the same time,” Fagan notes. “Usually one of them has to work into the culture and the leadership program and the philosophy of the other.
“There are very few examples of where the two start at the same time ... and in this case, it is fantastic.”
Purely for image, think of Fagan and Walsh as B1 and B2. And keep that image of two men who are so strongly linked and aligned that they begin to look, sound and behave as twins. It is a deliberate theme — to the point that Walsh has discarded the tracksuit to have his public appearances made more notable for his collar and club tie look.
And style is to be — it has to be — backed up by substance at a club without an AFL premiership since 1998.
“We have been able to align ourselves on how we want to drive performance at the Adelaide Football Club,” Fagan said. “We are borrowing from each other’s phrases. Phil will talk of elite standards — I will speak of elite standards.
“I have been talking about accountability. He talks about accountability. I’ve spoken of having the right people in the right seats. He has borrowed from that.
“I speak of having the ‘man conversation’ where nothing is off the table. That’s Phil too. We want to be challenged. So the discussion are positive and engaging — and hard and direct.”
Fagan was born in Adelaide. Before he was three, the family moved to Victoria and then Sydney. He studied sports management at the University of Canberra, starting in 1991 as the Crows played in their first AFL season. He became a “career sporting administrator” — first in a nine-year stint at the Australian Institute of Sport in Canberra, then 12 years leading the Brumbies and from February he was ARU boss Bill Pulver’s right-hand man with a roving portfolio to take care of everything.
To have been tempted to change codes and cities within four months seemed bizarre, particularly when many rated Fagan as Pulver’s successor, as soon as 2016. But as the ARU has exploded in the past month, Fagan’s move to the AFL and to Adelaide appears a stroke of genius.
“I was not looking to leave,” Fagan says. “There was a clear pathway for me. I am not a guy who jumps from job to job. My preference was to stay at the ARU for a long time.
“But I missed being at a club — and being at the coalface, as you are at a club. I did not want to jump back into a rugby club. There was the opportunity to lead into another sport and challenge myself; the chance to experience something different at a club where I could make a difference.”
Fagan’s attention to the Adelaide vacancy — or more to the point his suitability as Crows chief executive — was drawn by two friends who do business with the Adelaide Football Club. His chat with Crows board member Bob Foord ensured his application was lodged.
“I have always been a fan of the sport — and an admirer of the industry, but timing is everything,” Fagan said. “I had my head buried in Canberra with the Brumbies — there was no time to lift your head up. And when I left the Brumbies to go to the ARU, the intention was to make that the next phase of my career.”
Fagan did meet key AFL figures late last year, between the move from the Brumbies to the ARU. “I was interested in their view on people from other codes coming into the industry,” he said. “They were very positive. I got the strong indication the AFL was open to people with different experiences.
“And then (the Adelaide) job came up. And there were four reasons why this job struck me.
“First, there was the challenge of changing industries — the personal challenge to change and develop myself. Second, the AFL is a leading code in this country — and I coveted being part of it for a while. Three, Adelaide is a club I followed. The club ticks the boxes — national brand, great support base, it is strong financially and it has a talented list.
“Four, the city of Adelaide — I have always loved the city.
“Everything I looked at — opportunity, challenge, sport and city — it did not take long to decide that I wanted to make the plunge.”
Originally published as New era begins at Adelaide Football Club with new CEO Andrew Fagan and rookie coach Phil Walsh
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