Richmond president Peggy O’Neal admits the AFL is duty bound to talk to her club’s highly regarded CEO as a possible replacement for the outgoing head Gillon McLachlan but said Brendon Gale had just re-signed with the Tigers and the AFL should cast its recruiting net beyond league headquarters and clubs.
The AFL’s first female president said gender should be irrelevant to the AFL CEO appointment and the league should consider a female for the top job, adding the AFL had long passed similarly dated notions that presidents and CEOs needed to have come from a sport background or played at the highest level.
“Of course, they should talk to Brendon and see whether he is interested in talking to them, that’s another thing,” O’Neal said.
Richmond president Peggy O’Neal and CEO Brendon Gale.Credit: Eamon Gallagher
“He is a very talented person, he is very smart, he always has the view of the many stakeholders you have to balance. Brendon is great in all those things you would want in a CEO and he has given us wonderful service and everyone acknowledges how talented he is or we wouldn’t be talking about him this way.
“But right now he is our CEO and that is it.
“I know people like to speculate but in the meantime he is our CEO and we have a lot going on and he is committed to that. He just signed for three years through to 2025.”
On Thursday, Richmond coach Damien Hardwick praised Gale’s leadership and backed him to success should he get the job.
“Brendon is a star in my opinion. Whatever Brendon puts his mind to, he’s going to succeed,” Hardwick said at Punt Road.
“He is an aspirational leader, which I love. I love working for him here.
“He’s been such a strong supporter of our football department and our club in general.
“I’m sure the AFL will have a very, very good look at him.”
And if Gale does get the top job, one thing Hardwick would like his current boss to fix is the soft cap on football department expenditure because the Richmond coach stressed there was “no question” that it was becoming harder to attract staff such as medical professionals.
“They’ve been asked to do a hell of a lot more work for less money and they put in long hours,” Hardwick said.
“Coaches put in long hours but medicos are there 24/7 and we’re asking them to take less pay.”
O’Neal said the priority now should be congratulating McLachlan on the job he had done rather than rushing to name a successor.
“I think if you make the pool wide enough, there will be an equal number of meritorious people no matter what the gender,” she said.
“In every business, you look for someone like the person stepping aside and that is often too narrow so I would hope that there is an extensive search and more lateral thinking.
“It’s like what they used to say about presidents: do you have to have come from a sporting background to be a president? Do you have to have played at the highest level to be a CEO? I think you need to have knowledge or acquire that knowledge but I think the skills are skills applicable to most businesses.
“Businesses all the time look outside (the organisation). The CEO jobs, top jobs or chairman, they don’t go to internal candidates. You need to go to the market and see what is out there even to test the proposition of your internal candidates.
“You need to be sure you have exhausted your search of the pool of talent and rather than wait for people to apply to go out and find people that might be suitable.
“That is not to say anything about the people who are senior at AFL House and get mentioned because I hold them in high regard, too. It’s just if you want to say are we doing the best by the organisation, then you need to look far and wide.”
The AFL has appointed Bruce Williamson of executive recruitment firm Spencer Stuart to conduct the search.
Gale will no doubt be among those approached. O’Neal said that in her first year as president, Andrew Demetriou stood down and Gale’s name was raised as a possible replacement, and he had annually since been spoken about as future AFL CEO.
Williamson’s list of candidates will certainly contain AFL executives Andrew Dillon, Travis Auld and Kylie Rogers while Western Bulldogs president Kylie Watson Wheeler, who is senior vice president and managing director of Disney Australia and New Zealand, is a high-calibre candidate along with MCC CEO and former Hawthorn CEO Stuart Fox.
O’Neal scoffed at the idea she could throw her own hat in the ring, saying she had sated her sporting appetite with her work at Richmond.
with Ronny Lerner
Keep up to date with the best AFL coverage in the country. Sign up for the Real Footy newsletter.