Crisis engulfing Qantas under Richard Goyder’s chairmanship highlights desperate need for change at the AFL

Anyone searching for clues over the torpor that has engulfed AFL House should look no further than the crisis unfolding at Qantas and ask what or who is the common denominator?

Departing AFL CEO Gillion McLachlan with Richard Goyder. Picture: David Crosling

Anyone searching for clues over the torpor that has engulfed AFL House should look no further than the crisis unfolding at Qantas, the embattled airline where league commission chairman Richard Goyder is also chair.

Parallels can be drawn between both entities over farcical CEO succession planning and Goyder’s seemingly uncritical adoration of Alan Joyce and Gillon McLachlan.

In Goyder’s eyes, no matter the size of the scandal, Joyce and McLachlan could do no wrong.

He paid them both exorbitantly and convinced them to hang around beyond their expiry dates, decisions which have backfired.

This week’s revelations surrounding the failed pursuit of footy great Leigh Matthews to join the AFL commission should come as no surprise.

Matthews was once keen to help – and a conga line of clubs wanted him to do it – but the process to fill the two commission vacancies has dragged on for more than two and a half years.

Richard Goyder has always strongly backed Alan Joyce and Gillon McLachlan. Picture: Getty Images

And after more than a year of negotiations the AFL and AFL Players’ Association remain locked in yet another long-drawn out pay dispute, leaving the 18 clubs, 800 men’s players and 550 AFLW members waiting for answers over wages and salary caps.

Is it any wonder Brendon Gale and Tom Harley said “Thanks, but no thanks” when courted to fill the long vacant football operations job before the commission demonstrated its deep commitment to diversity – “no boys’ club here” – by installing Laura Kane?

In June, when McLachlan snapped his fingers and made the pesky Hawthorn racism scandal go away, the league trumpeted a long list of “AFL commitments … to combat racism and the improvement of cultural safety of First Nations players and their families”.

But how many of those “undertakings” have actually been acted on?

Eleven months ago, after the AFL’s chief concussion guru was exposed to the world as a phony, the league promised another raft of measures to protect the game’s players from head knocks.

Richard Goyder, Andrew Dillon and Gillon McLachlan. Picture: Getty Images

Again, how many have been followed through?

And how’s that proposed $700m stadium down in Hobart tracking?

Anyone got any ideas how to sticky tape a go-pro camera to a goalpost?

Joyce was finally forced out on Tuesday and will pocket millions in publicly declared payments.

But McLachlan’s wages (and departing bonuses) will never be disclosed thanks to one of Goyder’s first moves as chairman – an edict to make his remuneration secret, which made zero sense for a public institution that is tax exempt.

It’s time for Goyder to join McLachlan in leaving the AFL.

Originally published as Crisis engulfing Qantas under Richard Goyder’s chairmanship highlights desperate need for change at the AFL