The good and the Goodes: McLachlan a deal maker for better and worse

Gillon McLachlan’s greatest successes as AFL chief executive were the product of his leadership style, which also was the source of his most obvious failure.

On the plus side, McLachlan will be remembered for two major achievements. The first was that he steered the competition and the clubs through the COVID-19 crisis, when the AFL first suspended its (2020) season and then relocated to Queensland, an improvisation made over a matter of hours which allowed clubs to keep their doors open and for fans to support their teams amid the misery of lockdown.

The second was the creation of the women’s competition in 2016, against the advice of some within the industry who felt that the code wasn’t ready for AFLW. “He was undeterred,” said Peter Gordon, who was president of the Western Bulldogs through most of McLachlan’s reign and who reckoned the AFLW was very much McLachlan’s call.

AFLW – and the resultant growth in grassroots participation in footy by girls – is undoubtedly McLachlan’s signature legacy.

Gillon McLachlan.Credit:Chris Hopkins

Gordon was part of the AFL’s “war cabinet” with fellow presidents Jeff Kennett and Eddie McGuire when he received a phone call from McLachlan, advising him that the AFL had been given word that the COVID-19 situation in Victoria was becoming dire and that they would need to decide, within hours, whether the clubs and players jumped on a plane and set up shop in another state (Queensland). “We’ll either close down or relocate,” McLachlan said to Gordon.

McLachlan’s talent for deal-making, for finding consensus and listening to the various relevant parties and then acting decisively served him and the AFL very well during the nadir of the pandemic.

But his pragmatic, consultative style turned into a weakness during the Adam Goodes saga early in his tenure, when the AFL boss was reluctant to condemn the booing of the Indigenous champion and – as he has since acknowledged – he and the AFL let Goodes down by failing to take a stand against the sections of the public who were motivated by racial prejudice.

McLachlan, unlike his more confrontational predecessor Andrew Demetriou, is a conciliatory man, who, while tough in negotiations, prefers to be liked. In the Goodes crisis, McLachlan sought to straddle different strands of opinion within the AFL commission and the clubs, some of whom were not sympathetic to Goodes, when he could have simply declared unambiguous support for the champion.

If the AFL chief executive role is comparable in profile to a state premier, the handover from Demetriou to McLachlan was redolent of Victoria replacing the bruising, crash-through-or-crash Kennett with the soothing and more pragmatic Steve Bracks. If McLachlan has critics, they are far less numerous and vocal than Demetriou’s.

As a born deal-maker, McLachlan was successful in negotiating the vast broadcast revenues that have underpinned the AFL’s ambitious expansion into Gold Coast and Greater Western Sydney and the women’s game, and in obtaining – via governments – the obscene amounts of taxpayer money that have gone into stadia and lavish club facilities.

To date, the women’s investment has made faster progress than the 17th and 18th teams, which remain heavily reliant on the AFL for funding and which will need untold millions for the next decade at the least.

Indeed, the broadcast deal acted as the AFL’s answer to Norway’s oil reserves, or Australia’s iron ore, in that the money that flowed into the sport meant that McLachlan – a polo-playing blueblood from rural South Australia – could preside over a heavily socialised and equalised competition, taking funding from the powerful clubs such as West Coast, Collingwood and Hawthorn and subsiding the new teams, the Brisbane Lions, St Kilda, the Bulldogs and Melbourne.

It is not accidental that three hitherto perennially unsuccessful clubs – the Western Bulldogs (2016), Richmond (2017) and Melbourne (2021) have broken premiership droughts that stretched back many decades during McLachlan’s time at the helm; two of those clubs, the Dogs and Demons, were heavily supported by a funding model and framework – including a soft cap on football department spending from 2013 – that effectively gave them parity with the monster clubs.

McLachlan also inherited the Essendon saga from Demetriou, the most divisive episode to confront footy since the attempted club mergers of the 1990s. As is his wont, McLachlan tried to fashion a deal that would see the players treated leniently, but was unable to stick what was a difficult landing, as the Essendon 34 crashed and burned. “I reckon he handled that as well as he could,” judged Gordon, who acted for two Bulldog players among the 34.

McLachlan also faced the criticism that the AFL on his watch was a confederacy of mates, or “boys club,” and it is evident that the accusation has gained enough traction for the AFL to be more conscious of women’s role in the clubs and head office. McLachlan also was forced, reluctantly, to oversee the exits of his friend and football boss Simon Lethlean and fellow executive Richard Simpkiss over affairs with staff, a move that arguably set a bar for behaviour that the league will find problematic.

McLachlan is slated to negotiate another broadcast deal before he leaves, and it will be fascinating to see if he can bring the global tech giants, or a new streaming partner, into the broadcasting mix to secure the dollars that keep the competition relatively robust financially and ahead of the pack.

McLachlan, a University Blues ruckman who trained at Carlton in the ’90s, will likely lead a less public life after footy. “We’ve got big shoes to fill,” said Swans chairman Andrew Pridham of the next CEO.

Whoever takes the baton from him – and the favourites all are from within footy – Gillon McLachlan has made an indelible mark.

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