If you were to take the Internet as representative of how club supporters feel, then you’d probably believe all Essendon supporters are members of the Stand By Hird Division, still grimly defending the barricades at the Red and Black February Factory as the rumble of ASADA tanks grows ever louder.
There’s an excellent piece by The Age’s Martin Flanagan today about Bill Jennings, a lifelong Essendon member who suggested the recent AGM that board members should talk to average fans. This indicates that many Essendon supporters are no longer willing to simply toe the official line on the drug saga.
The article covers a lot of ground but for mine, they key point Jennings makes is this:
“Consider the statements this month about James Hird’s pay arrangements – our suspended coach is being paid $750,000 for a year in which he is not doing his job. How do you reckon that news was received last week by Essendon members who work at Holden?”
This taps into something very interesting. A core part of Essendon’s mentality is that it is a rich club – the rich club. “Peasant” clubs may have to worry about paying off a coach, but Essendon can just pay “Sir” James to do nothing for a year. It won’t even make a dent in the pile.
The problem is the drugs scandal has made a significant dent in Essendon’s finances. For the first time, the club is in debt. More importantly though – because Essendon is more than capable of covering that debt – is the damage being done to club’s reputation, both internally and externally.
If the Essendon CEO job became available five years ago, would they struggle to find a suitable candidate? No, they’d have had the pick of the litter. It doesn’t take a genius to work out that high-end candidates don’t see Essendon as that attractive a proposition.
More worrying would be the attitude of supporters like Jennings. For all Essendon’s wealthy supporters like Paul Little and cotorie groups like the Collins Street Dons, it is the average punter like Jennings that is lifeblood of any club. If people like Jennings come to feel that the club has broken faith, then they will reconsider how much of their emotional loyalty the club deserves. And once lost, that loyalty is very difficult to win back.
It is not an overstatement to say there’s a struggle for the soul of Essendon at the moment. There’s one school of thought that nothing needs to change, that Essendon remains rich and powerful and untouchable, that the drugs saga is a form of conspiracy, that Essendon were unfairly singled out, but that it matters not, because the club can simply thumb their nose at the AFL and pay James Hird anyway.
But then there is the like of Jennings, and he’s far from alone, who realise that a return to the old days is not possible. It is not 1950 anymore. These are people who realise that the other 17 clubs voted with the AFL for a reason. The league is now more than ever a collective. No club, not even the richest and best connected, can take on City Hall and win.
It is yet to be seen which view will prevail and there is every chance the “We are Essendon, we do what we like” camp will persist. In which case, Essendon will go on fighting them in the media, in the courts and on the Internet and they will lose.
The drugs saga has changed football forever. Wise judges see that. And more than anything, it has changed Essendon. Whether the club, in the round, from suspended coach to average member, can absorb this change and react for the positive, remains to be seen.
