Richard Goyder’s AFL commission exit should come in the form of a coup by exasperated club presidents
After two decades of blatantly compromised integrity probes, jobs for the boys and a lack of accountability, the AFL’s administration finally appears headed for change – and these are the men being urged to take over.
There’s one of two ways Richard Goyder will hit the exits as chairman of the AFL commission.
Option one would see football’s invisible leader afforded a dignified departure by agreeing to hand over to a yet-to-be nominated successor at the end of next year.
Option two, the one he deserves, would see Goyder blasted out in a coup by exasperated club presidents later this year.
Either way, there will be no three-year extension for the man Gillon McLachlan’s kids call “Uncle Rich”.
And after two decades of blatantly compromised integrity probes, jobs for the boys and a lack of transparency and accountability at AFL House, the league’s administration finally appears headed for change.
Among those being urged to take Goyder’s job and reshape a governance system in desperate need of reform are two close friends and highly-respected figures in the football community; Sydney chairman Andrew Pridham and former Collingwood president Jeff Browne.
Port Adelaide boss David Koch, investment banker John Wylie and former Western Bulldogs president Peter Gordon have also been touted.
It was Pridham who spoke up in a meeting between club bosses and Goyder’s commission in late 2020, suggesting it was time for a sweeping review of the game’s administrative structure.
Not since the 1993 Crawford review has footy’s ruling body opened itself up to a warts and all assessment of its methods and the way forward for Australian Rules football at all levels.
Pridham, 58, is smart, independently wealthy and from outside Melbourne’s boys’ club establishment.
But it’s not his style to blow things up and his ascension to the top, if he could be convinced to apply and farewell the Swans, would have to come with the blessing of the commission and majority of clubs.
Should a contender like Koch, Pridham, Wylie or Gordon take over it might involve serving the 2026 season as a chairman-elect under Goyder.
Browne, 71 - a former Channel 9 managing director and the league’s senior legal adviser for 22 years (who happens to be chairman of Pridham’s Sydney-based company MA Financial Group) - is also being pushed to make a run for the job.
The man who oversaw the post-Eddie McGuire rebuild at the Magpies (after blowing up the Mark Korda-led board), culminating in the 2023 flag, has taken a break after a battle with blood cancer, but is now healthy and said to be missing the game.
It might be music to the ears of Essendon great Jobe Watson, who was stripped of his 2012 Brownlow Medal by the AFL commission after being rubbed out for doping by the Court of Arbitration for Sport.
Browne said at the time that if he was in charge he would have asserted the AFL’s authority and allowed him to keep it because the league’s own anti-doping tribunal had found him not guilty.
Browne has also spoken in support of a Crawford-style review - a move that could explore the very function and size of the commission, health of the grass roots game, the scourge of concussion and past player suicides and distributions of the industry’s riches.
But you don’t need a review to know that Andrew Dillon’s executive team desperately needs to be bolstered or that a once formidable AFL commission led by hands-on figures like Graeme Samuel and Peter Scanlon has morphed into a do-nothing, rubberstamp body.
By stealth (and probably the design of past executive teams where real power was asserted) the commission became a ceremonial group, more interested in seating arrangements while wining and dining Australia’s business and political elite at the ‘G on grand final day.
The recent decisions to reject Leigh Matthews’ interest in joining the commission and to stymie Brendon Gale’s application for the CEO’s job said everything about the state of their thinking.
Under Goyder’s leadership (as it was at Qantas) the AFL has drifted.
His inaction over eight years as chairman and 14 as a commissioner includes oversight of the Essendon drugs debacle, Melbourne tanking affair, Hawthorn racism fiasco and Glen Bartlett saga.
Goyder has been the common denominator throughout, observing it all and doing nothing about it - gushing at his golden boy CEO McLachlan before begging him to stay, undermining Dillon’s own run for the job.
The AFL is at a crossroads and needs a visionary leader - not a lame-duck - to review its operations and take the country’s biggest sporting code forward.
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