The Phoenix Rises is the remarkable story of the transformation of ‘Australia’s Game’ from a troubled Victorian Football League to the Australian Football League powerhouse of today, told by the man who pulled the levers for drastic change.
BigFooty has 5 copies to give away to members. For a chance to win, just tell us your favourite story about something that happened on the footy field in the 80’s that they’d never get away with nowadays. Post your story in this thread: https://www.bigfooty.com/forum/threads/new-footy-book-the-phoenix-rises.1068682/
The following is an extract from the chapter titled “Up Yours Oakley”.
By late 1989 the Bulldogs were insolvent and on the verge of being placed in administration. That didn’t happen, but what was about to unfold was a sequence of events that would be the most dramatic and challenging of my time at the League, that tested the relationship between the League and its public, that would paint me as the villain in a drama driven by financial pain and a simple desire to protect the future integrity of the League.
On the bright side, they were events that would show that the great strength of football lay well beyond any balance sheet. It lay in the heartfelt commitment and passion of the fans, if you could find a way to extract those things. And one man did: a local solicitor and passionate Bulldogs fan called Peter Gordon. Passion and commitment and hard work would ultimately save the Footscray Football Club, along with support from local business houses, particularly the chemical giant ICI.
All that was ahead of me when the commission met on the morning of Tuesday 3 October 1989—a fateful meeting. Discussions between the commission and the presidents of Fitzroy and Footscray had been progressing well, with the final dealings on the merger being done the Sunday before with just two members of each board present. “Amalgamation of Clubs” was the first item at the 3 October meeting, and the minutes reported the outcome of negotiations and the processes leading to the day’s agenda:
Chairman advised that agreement in principle had been reached between the two club presidents and that the Fitzroy Board of Directors was supportive to the proposal and that members of the Footscray Football Club board had been briefed by the club’s president pending a confidential meeting with the commission at 12 noon. (VFL Commission minutes, 3 October 1989.)
The situation out west was more than dire. It was presented to the commission that in the previous decade, Footscray had lost “a total of $3.9m”, and had made a minor profit in just one of those years; that “guarantors to the club’s overdraft of $400,000 desired to withdraw from such arrangements alleging condition to the guarantees had been breached by the club”. There were clear grounds for an administrator to be appointed. The relatively smooth path to a merger, with each club in agreement and the League supportive, was an obvious way forward.
Things might have been cool, calm and collected around that decision at League headquarters that morning, but the horse had already bolted. The merger push was to be won and lost on the uncertain battlefield of public relations. We knew PR would be part of the story, but we never guessed just how big a part. When the commission met that day to set the merger ball rolling, we were already on the losing side.
Despite the support of president Nick Columb, many on the Footscray board were not pleased, in particular chief executive Dennis Galimberti. On the evening of 2 October, Galimberti had got wind that negotiations for a merger were entering their final stages, and had run straight to the media. The morning that the two clubs would meet with the commission to confirm arrangements, Melbourne had awoken to a screamer headline in The Sun:
VFL CLUBS “TO MERGE”
VFL club Footscray is set to merge with Fitzroy, Bulldog chief executive Dennis Galimberti said last night.
He said the new team would be known as the Fitzroy Bulldogs, with their home ground at Princes Park.
As the first step in the merger, Footscray’s licence to play in the re-named VFL, the Australian Football League, is expected to be terminated today.
An emotional Galimberti, 33, said: “The deal has been done for two weeks and will be announced tomorrow.”
In terms of supporter reaction, Galimberti’s evident displeasure was just the beginning. From a League point of view there seemed no option but a merger, and this view was shared by Fitzroy and Footscray presidents Leon Wiegard and Columb. Things for both clubs were grim, but at Footscray the club was on the verge of irreversible crisis. That was very much the point of the merger exercise: something had to change. It might not be popular, but the alternative would be dire: letting a club simply go to the wall. Footscray had been attempting to raise funds as part of a “Bulldogs Connection” group but had raised little more than $30,000, which was not going to save it.
As the commission meeting started, I gave a quick report on the state of play with the merger, presenting a document called “Background to the Fitzroy Bulldogs” that, among other things, laid out the commercial position for both clubs but focused pretty squarely on the toxic debt position at Footscray. Galimberti was clearly aware of the situation the club he led was in, but chose to go the PR route.
The stage was set for a meeting with Footscray directors at 1pm. It didn’t promise to be easy, but the commission was of one mind on the issue.
A merger was the best resolution to a situation that, if left to run, could result in prosecution of the club and the sheeting home of financial responsibility to individual club directors.
The room was tense, it would be fair to say. There were seven Footscray directors—Messrs Columb, Beattie, Gibson, Dudley, Moody, McDonald and Adsett—and close to the full commission (Peter Nixon was unavailable but had been fully briefed). I began by expressing my concern at the morning’s negative publicity courtesy of Galimberti’s briefing. He had quit the club overnight, but as everyone in the room knew, the publicity had not helped the merger cause.
This was not a situation, or so we saw it at the time, in which emotion could play a constructive part. A supporter’s deep love for the Footscray club wouldn’t bail out the club’s finances: it had not during the past 18 months—indeed, in the past decade—and we believed it would not now.
I walked the Footscray board through the financial position and its likely consequences. They had an $800,000 shortfall in the current financial year, an accumulated trading loss over the previous decade of $3.8 million ($3.9 million when non-trading matters were considered), debt on the books of $2 million, and no prospect of any financial reversal. Then I made my clinching point to the directors of the failing club. The minutes set it down:
Mr Oakley expressed the commission’s view that the Footscray Football Club Limited was currently insolvent and by continuing to trade and incur debt, the directors were, in the commission’s view, in breach of Section 556 of the Companies Code and if this situation was allowed to continue, then directors could be exposed to convictions, resulting in personal fines and/or jail sentences as well as ultimately becoming responsible on a personal basis for the club’s liabilities.
I think that pretty much described the state of play. But there was more:
Mr Oakley made further reference to recent correspondence forwarded to the current directors, a copy of which had been forwarded to the
League commission from one of the guarantors of the club’s present overdraft facility with Westpac Banking Corporation.
Mr Oakley noted that a number of serious allegations had been made by the loan guarantor and should such allegations be substantiated, dire
legal consequences could flow.
Mr Oakley indicated that … the commission’s view was that the club’s position was non-recoverable.
I had one last point to make to a Footscray board sitting in rather grim and stony contemplation: “Mr Oakley … contended that the only option available to the directors of the club was to consider merging with another League club and that if the board of the Footscray Football Club was prepared to consider such a possibility, it would have to be consummated this afternoon as, if agreement could not be reached, the League proposed to immediately move towards the appointment of an administrator and/or liquidator.”
There’s no denying this was a tough, heartbreaking moment for the Footscray directors. Columb made one last plea for salvation, asking whether the club could sell its present players to other clubs to erase its debt, but under League rules this was not possible. I wanted a quick response—we had to act quickly before regulatory authorities became curious as a result of the overnight press.
The commissioners left the Footscray board to it and moved into an adjacent room to await the decision. The tension was too much for Albert Mantello, who had his ear to the wall trying to hear what was going on next door. He drew a graph on the whiteboard with a line going up and down according to the tone of the conversation—quite the comedian was Albert. We weren’t encouraging him in any way, but it did rather ease the tension. Unfortunately the indelible pen he used left a lasting impression for all to see, much to his embarrassment.
The discussion didn’t take too long. After about 30 minutes, Columb sent word that the commission should arrange for representatives of the Fitzroy Football Club to attend and start talks around a merger. Once Columb had announced the club’s willingness to meet with Fitzroy to complete the deal, three Footscray directors—Gibson, Moody and McDonald—resigned on the spot, and at 3.06pm we adjourned the meeting.
Wiegard and a Fitzroy delegation were there in quick time and the deal was promptly done. It was late afternoon and already VFL House had a decent gaggle of media waiting. And in a taste of what was to come, an angry group of demonstrators decked out in Footscray colours, and prompted by the day’s news, chanted defiantly outside. We called a press conference for 5pm, arranged for Footscray legend Charlie Sutton to be there and prepared to face the music.
I spoke on behalf of the commission, Wiegard and Columb on behalf of their clubs. Charlie, one of the true gentlemen I met in my time in the game (and one of the toughest players), gave his reluctant blessing and we were done.
It had been a hard day at the office, but I never doubted that we had done the right thing. It was the only thing we could do given the responsibilities of the League to the rest of the competition and the game generally. And, given the perilous financial state of the club and the stress on its directors, it seemed the only thing they could do as well.
All hell, however, was about to break loose.
