Sacked Podcast: Andrew Demetriou says Eddie McGuire would make a great AFL Commissioner
Andrew Demetriou has rejected allegations of racism lobbed at Eddie McGuire and says the former Collingwood president would make an ideal AFL Commissioner.
Former AFL chief executive Andrew Demetriou believes former Collingwood president Eddie McGuire is perfectly placed to join the AFL Commission, adamant his only sin in commissioning the Do Better report was a bungled press conference.
Demeriou says he has no regrets over his handling of McGuire’s “King Kong” comments despite criticism the AFL should have stood the Pies president down.
Demetriou said despite the chorus of “do-gooders” who wanted McGuire’s scalp in 2013, McGuire had proven over and again he was not racist despite his gaffe about Sydney champion Adam Goodes.
“Eddie would make an outstanding AFL commissioner, and people will say, ‘Are you just his mate, you’re saying all that’. But if you believe in the good of football, and you want football (to thrive), he was a very progressive Collingwood president for 20 plus years, and made some mistakes. But I defy anyone not to have made mistakes.
“I think he’s been judged harshly on some mistakes that he’s made. Has he probably been judged more harshly because he’s profile? Most likely.”
“But we have just got to be very careful that we don’t run good people out of the game because they make mistakes. Everyone makes mistakes. I’ve made mistakes. He might have made the same mistake more than once. But some of the vilifying of him and the commentary around him is really hurtful. I’ve actually got a lot of sympathy for him.”
Demetriou said McGuire’s apology immediately after the Goodes comments was appropriate.
“No. I stand by what I said. He’s self admitted that he made some errors. And some of the things he said he could have said differently. But he’s the least racist person that I know of, I know things he’s done in Indigenous communities. I know the time he’s given, his own free time to volunteer for various things.
“Look, it might have satisfied the do-gooders out there, you know, to take a stance like that, but life doesn’t operate that way. I mean, I know there’s a minority of people, very vocal, that want everything to be a certain way. I don’t see that. I’m more (of a) pragmatist.”
McGuire’s statement that the release of the Do Better report into historic racism at Collingwood was a “historic and proud day” eventually saw him resign last year.
“Look, I read the report. And I think he just blundered at the press conference, to be honest,” said Demetriou.
“I thought some aspects of the report to go back 30 years were harsh, because every football club would probably be judged the same way.
“If they had to come to North Melbourne they would have heard lots of things when the Krakouers were there, so does that mean that the club’s bad? I don’t think so. The AFL and the clubs have come a long way. They’re probably infinitely in a better position than most of society, but can still improve.
“I’m not condoning in any way any of that commentary, but we can get very, very critical of some errors.”
Andrew Demetriou has labelled as “appalling” Hawthorn president Jeff Kennett’s decision to launch a book about the AFL’s boys club at the height of a pandemic that saw league officials losing their jobs.
Michael Warner’s The Boys’ Club charted a turbulent decade and was the inside story behind the power and politics of AFL House.
Kennett said in his speech of the AFL that “I have witnessed this practice of the Boys Club. This organisation fails on every test of good governance”.
He said there was a “huge trail of bullying”, many instances of conflict of interest from high-ranking AFL officials and the AFL had covered up issues in regard to abuse of women.
He labelled Demetriou a “thug” and said all AFL club officials should read the book as a “blueprint of how not to run a business or not-for-profit”.
Demetriou told the Herald Sun’s Sacked podcast Kennett’s appearance was inappropriate
“I thought it was appalling that Jeff Kennett launched that book, as the president of the football club that’s in the middle of Covid. Because it wasn’t about me, it was more about the people that work at the AFL,” he said.
“I mean, there were 20 per cent of the staff who had gone, they were working around the clock trying to survive, keep the clubs afloat. And you got a current president of a football club, trashing the AFL, I thought that was appalling.”
Kennett said in his speech that because the league was confronting a pandemic it should be even more concerned about its quality of service to clubs and their people.
Demetriou, who served as AFL chief executive from 2003 to 2014, said he had a strong track record of hiring women in important positions.
“I don’t know what a boys’ club is. I think it’s one of those throwaway lines. It’s used to try and get across a point about how poorly women have been treated,” he said. “
“And I think it’s unfair. I never promoted a boys’ club at the AFL. We just happen to have a lot of executives that were men.
“And we had a majority of the people that worked in our staff as women. We introduced women’s football and women commissioners and so I don’t buy that.”
AFL commissioner Richard Goyder said last year of Warner’s book: “It’s not a book that I respect”.
But Richmond president Peggy O’Neil made clear revelations that 14 employees had left AFL House, AFL House and AFL clubs due to bullying, poor behaviour and harassment should be investigated.
“I am (concerned about the reports), I think more so if reports like that were coming out about my club, I’d want to get to the bottom of it. I’d want to know how it was not made public or wasn’t transparent,” she told ABC Radio.
“I think it‘s a very big concern that in a time where we want the sport to be open and welcoming to everyone, that there are women who allegedly have been treated poorly.
“And if I were the AFL Commission, I would want to get to the bottom as quickly as possible and find out how it was ignored for so long.”
Demetriou: AFL expansion can’t stop in Tassie
Former AFL chief executive Andrew Demetriou says the AFL must expand to 20 AFL teams if it is to hand Tasmania a deserved side in a national competition.
Demetriou told the Herald Sun’s Sacked podcast the AFL should open bids for a 20th team at the same time it brought the Tasmanian side online.
AFL chief executive Gillon McLachlan was bullish about the league’s capacity to fund Tasmania this week ahead of a likely August decision on a 19th side.
But Demetriou, who led the AFL’s charge to expand into Gold Coast and Greater Western Sydney, made clear a 19-team model did not make financial sense.
“The starting point is that the best thing that could happen to Tasmania is to get an AFL team. I think it’d be great for the state,” he said.
“I think it’d be great for the morale of the state. I think it’d be a vindication of the patience and the support and the contribution they’ve made to the game. I think it’d be a real economic turnaround for the state to bring more people back.
“So I’m a Tasmanian club establishment supporter. I just don’t like the way they’re going about it. I don’t think 19 clubs works. If I thought Tasmania was coming in, I would rather the AFL has plans for a 20th licence. If a Tasmanian club is coming in 2027, if that’s what it is, then set about asking the states to bid for a 20th licence.
“The Northern Territory might want to have a 20th team, WA might want to have a third club. Queensland might want everyone up north (Cairns), you can’t have another one in Victoria, obviously. I think Sydney and New South Wales are big enough for two. But 19 teams doesn’t cut it.”
Demetriou believes the AFL has made as much as $900 million in extra revenue from its expansion clubs but says 19 teams is only an outlay of cost rather than a revenue driver.
“One extra team (from 19 to 20) guarantees you a 10th game and that guarantees you a broadcast rights outcome,” he said.
“What’s wrong with 20 teams? Everyone said 18 teams is going to be too many and we got the obligatory ‘is it going to be thinning of talent, not enough money to go around, not enough players. Every time the competition has grown, everything grows with it.
“It couldn’t be in the (Perth) CBD because of the Eagles and Fremantle, but they’re a rich enough state to absorb a third team. I think there’s merit in the Northern Territory. Why not?”
While the Carter report into Tasmanian football posed the question of a relocation, a new club or a current team playing home games in Tasmania, Demetriou says the state will never accept a relocated side.
“First of all, if you want to disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of supporters, relocate a team. And secondly, they want their own team. They want to build it. I think there’s a misnomer that some people think there’s going to be 42 Tasmanians running around well. There won’t be but you know, if you’re gonna have a team in 2027, I’d give Tasmania the whole region now.”
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