Bruce Mathieson’s attacks on the Carlton Football Club are never pretty, but last weekend the so-called powerbroker changed his combative style from scatter gun to pointed and personal.
And the fallout has shaken the club, exposing cracks in the much-talked-of stability president Luke Sayers has made his mantra, leaving Sayers with a difficult choice.
Carlton president Luke Sayers.Credit: Carlton Football Club
Carlton were sitting in the eight last Friday when Mathieson savaged the legacy of the game’s longest-serving club chief Brian Cook, declared football boss Brad Lloyd should have been removed and said that Sayers’ board was ineffectual and “weak”.
Some of the comments were so nasty they were laughable, but that doesn’t excuse the silence from the Blues president this week. Surely in the aftermath of the Mathieson savaging, Sayers needed to speak up for his two key off-field lieutenants.
Mathieson’s Endeavour Group leases and manages three gaming venues to the Blues, a deal originally struck in 2010, he said, because “I love the club”. A fourth venue run by O’Briens is more profitable, but the Mathieson deal still reaps a seven-figure annual profit for Carlton.
Mathieson’s nephew Craig is a long-serving Carlton board member whose position at the club further compromises the quest for unity. There are divided views at the Blues over whether the younger Mathieson holds the same views as his uncle.
Contacted this week and asked whether he wished to distance himself from the attacks on Cook and Lloyd, Craig Mathieson refused to comment. Bruce Mathieson was also contacted for comment. Carlton left it to Lloyd to front the media and then Patrick Cripps.
The suggestion is that Sayers is playing the long game. That he has dealt with both Mathiesons privately and that the club is reviewing its commercial agreement with the older man who lashes out at the club every so often from his Gold Coast home. And whose theories often mirror those of disenchanted favourite sons closer to home.
That seems insipid. Mathieson said in the Herald Sun of Cook: “... when you sit down and look at it, he was controlled by Frank Costa under his regime at Geelong … you see there’s a million
No.2s and No.3s in this world - but there are very, very few No.1s who can make a decision and carry it out and get it done … He’s made no decisions at Carlton. I wouldn’t have left Lloyd there for a start.”
He described the Carlton leaders as “complete and utter imbeciles”. There seems little point in detailing Cook’s achievements in the AFL since he first became CEO of West Coast in 1990, but Mathieson’s comments were deeply hurtful even if they were ridiculous.
It seems difficult to envisage how a club stays in business with a man who speaks about any form of client in this manner ... If it is correct that Sayers was looking to end the agreement with Endeavour establishments by the end of next year surely he should now bring that forward. And equally surely Craig Mathieson’s role on the board looks shaky.
It is true that Sayers wanted Ross Lyon to coach the club but was then spooked by internal and external forces. Frankly, this left him looking a little weak but having stepped in and immediately ordered a full review of football and further Sayers oversaw a raft of changes that initially looked to have made change for the better.
Now that the football fortunes are faltering and Lyon has found some success at St Kilda, Sayers must live with the results of those parallel decisions as they unfold.
He has also inherited the deep resentment still held against the club by influential former champion, board director and list boss Stephen Silvagni, who lost a power struggle with former CEO Cain Liddle and Lloyd in 2019. At son Jack’s 100th game, Silvagni refused to enter the clubrooms to join the celebrations.
Carlton CEO and veteran administrator Brian Cook.Credit: Chris Hopkins
But that a string of losses can still lead to such off-field carnage remains a big problem for Carlton. For too long the club has allowed itself to be taken hostage by forces outside the club. Different to Essendon’s pushy and interfering coteries but creating similar results, the Blues’ favourite playing sons too often turn feral when the chips are down and the term powerbroker is too often a dirty word.
You could smell the unrest late in April when stories started circulating about Sayers’ board tenure with the suggestion he was considering constitutional change to extend it. This proved wildly exaggerated. Sayers’ final term concludes at the end of 2024, but he can remain for one extra year under club rules.
And Mathieson’s timing is interesting. It is true that Cook’s comments about making finals were poorly judged and that the Blues have again failed to live up to expectations. But the club is nowhere near out of the 2023 hunt and yet during the worst of the past two decades under Mark LoGiudice’s eight seasons, which included two wooden spoons and a best-placed 11th, the pubs baron stayed silent.
He has turned on Sayers after less than two seasons. Whether the president made the right calls at the end of that brutal review led by Geoff Walsh, he must live with the ramifications of those now and act accordingly. And occasionally step up publicly.
But now he needs to make a call on Mathieson. Soon. Million-dollar profits are not worth the brand damage and internal angst inflicted by these attacks. Cook and his team have surely started searching for other revenues in this anti-gaming climate.
In a week when Carlton approach their old on-field enemy Collingwood, in which Nathan Buckley called on Michael Voss to channel his inner competitive beast and in which his two most senior men were smashed by a powerful supporter and commercial partner, Sayers needed to follow suit and defend his club.
Sometimes the choice of dignified silence and avoiding reaction in the name of stability is not the strong choice.
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