Top lawyer says Eddie McGuire’s two-decade reign at the top of Collingwood is “not healthy”

In the wake of the trade period calamity, a top Melbourne lawyer and former Magpies director says Collingwood needs to make major changes at the top.

Collingwood president Eddie McGuire claps the VFLW team after winning the premiership in 2019. Picture: Michael Klein

Eddie McGuire is presiding over “the worst administration in the history of the Collingwood Football Club” and “needs to step down” to give someone else a go, a former Magpies director says.

Leading lawyer David Galbally, AM QC, said he was appalled by the club’s latest calamity — the purging of four players to make room in a bulging salary cap — and has called for a major “cleanout” at the top.

“The Collingwood administration has lost the plot,” Galbally said.

“They seem to be lurching from one crisis to another. There is no governance to speak of at Collingwood.”

On the 22-year reign of McGuire, Galbally declared: “You can be in charge of a club for far too long. It happened with Tommy Sherrin. It happened with John Elliott. There are plenty of other examples, and they all lose sight of what is going on and get consumed with the belief that the club is theirs.”

McGuire has been president of Collingwood since October 1998 and is easily the game’s longest serving current club boss.

“They really need a new administration at Collingwood. Full stop,” Galbally said.

“Eddie needs to step down. He can’t stay there forever. He’s not there for life. And it’s not healthy for the club to have the same person serve in that role for as long as he has.

“The presidency of the Collingwood Football Club carries with it enormous impramateur, right across the community - and it’s very hard to let go and give it away. But it’s time. The club has got to look to the future. It needs new ideas and a fresh approach.

“And that is not to say that Eddie hasn’t been a tremendous asset as president to the club.”

Galbally, who served on the Magpies board from 1974-83, said the treatment of star midfielder Adam Treloar was the latest sign of a club in disarray.

Magpies premiership player Dayne Beams played just nine games for Collingwood after returning from Brisbane at the end of 2018.

The recruitment of Dayne Beams, the Heritier Lumumba racism inquiry and a string of player misconduct issues also pointed to a long-standing culture and governance problem, he said.

“You start to really question the wisdom about the way in which the players are being communicated to and being treated,” Galbally said.

“How do you let the salary cap blow out to what it is with good governance? How do you let the Treloar situation arise? And how do you expect to have a strong fabric and a strong playing unit that will take you into a finals series, and by hook or by crook stand side-by-side each other and win you a premiership, if you treat people like that?”

Galbally also took aim at McGuire’s long-serving board ally, Magpies vice-president Mark Korda.

“They’ve got Mark Korda from KordaMentha on the board — and they are one of the biggest accounting firms in Australia. So how can they stuff up the salary cap like that?” Galbally said.

“I am very concerned and very upset about what I am seeing.

“There seems to be a problem with the culture of the club. Culture is an easy word to throw around, but there is no real strength or backbone associated with Collingwood.

“This is turning out to be the worst administration in the history of the Collingwood Football Club — and one of the worst in the history of the AFL — it is absolutely appalling.”

The other Magpies board members are billionaire Alex Waislitz, ex-Australia Post chief executive Christine Holgate, club CEO Mark Anderson, Jodie Sizer, Paul Licuria and Peter Murphy, the businessman who conducted an independent review into the club’s operations in 2017.

Herald Sun