By Jake Niall
Former AFL boss Andrew Demetriou has quietly returned to the game, helping introduce and sell a program designed to create and develop new football administrators for the AFL competition.
Demetriou, who has not had a formal role with the AFL or a club since his exit in 2014, has acted as a paid consultant for a company that has struck a deal to train aspiring club and AFL officials – a concept that he helped deliver, along with ex-AFL Players’ Association senior executive and ex-Carlton player (and official) Ian Prendergast.
Former AFL CEOs Gillon McLachlan (left) and Andrew Demetriou (right) with current league boss Andrew Dillon at Neil Mitchell’s departure from 3AW Mornings last year.Credit: JustIn McManus
Demetriou, who also acts as a regular sounding board for AFL chief executive Andrew Dillon, confirmed to this masthead his involvement as a consultant to Sports Advisory Partners, and his role in helping to sell the concept to the AFL and his former executive Dillon, and current head of football Laura Kane.
Demetriou does not hold shares in Sports Advisory Partners, which plans to have an initial intake of 20 people who would be trained in preparation for the increasingly difficult role of general manager of football operations at AFL clubs, but the training would not be confined to people within the game.
Carlton CEO Brian Cook.Credit: Eamon Gallagher
The former AFL CEO, who recently finished up a 10-year stint as chairman of Capital Health, said he had long felt that the AFL industry did not produce enough talent in the roles of general manager of football – as in the likes of Neil Balme and Geoff Walsh – or CEOs like Brian Cook, Trevor Nisbett, Greg Swann and Peter Jackson, all of whom, bar Nisbett, worked at multiple clubs.
“It’s pretty fundamental that if you want your sport to be better, you need very good administrators because they pick coaches, and they pick sports scientists, and they manage recruitment and the CEOs do the same,” said Demetriou, who will not be involved in direct running of the program.
The program would apply to AFLW as well as AFL clubs.
Prendergast, an ex-Carlton player who became a senior figure at the player union, then headed the NRL Players’ Association, is running Sports Advisory Partners with Sam Chadwick, the former general manager of the A-League and GM of AFL NSW-ACT.
Former West Coast chief executive Nisbett presented on this program to the 18 club CEOs on Friday. Nisbett and veteran administrator Geoff Walsh will help mentor/teach the aspiring administrators.
The AFL will subsidise some costs of running the program.
Demetriou during his time as AFL chief executive.Credit: Penny Stephens
At Dillon’s suggestion, Demetriou has had catch-ups with Kane to provide some advice.
Demetriou has been far more of a sounding board for senior AFL figures than he was in the reign of his successor Gillon McLachlan, whom Demetriou told he would not interfere with and would give him space to chart his own course.
Participants will pay $10,000 for the course, with Prendergast expecting that AFL clubs will pay for up-and-coming football officials to take part, as they would professional development courses at the likes of Harvard or French universities that specialise in organisational management.
“They’ll select them, and hopefully we’ll get at least one [official] from each club, and maybe we double-up, because it might be a man and a woman from both clubs,” said Demetriou.
Demetriou’s more active involvement in football has extended to his son Sacha’s junior football, his 15-year-old having played for the Sandringham Dragons under-16 team and been included in North Melbourne’s father-son academy. His son is eligible for North as a father-son, and the ex-AFL boss attends North Melbourne games with his son on occasion, along with the under 16s.
Demetriou’s highest-profile board position was his stint on the board of Crown Resorts, which saw him heavily scrutinised and criticised for the evidence he gave to the NSW government’s Crown Resorts inquiry in 2020.
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