- Mar 1, 2014
- 9,664
- 18,907
- AFL Club
- Port Adelaide
EPILOGUE SETTING # 2.
Shanghai International Airport, Pu Dong District.
External view of China Eastern airliner at Gate 13 air bridge being lashed with rain. Camera travels inside to first class, closes in on tall Caucasian passenger with glasses, prominent Roman nose and a pointy bald head jabbing a finger ruthlessly at his iPhone ... the same Huawei model as used by State Security officers.
VOICE (in putonghua then English with Chinese accent): “This is your captain speaking. More bad news for us, I’m afraid... “
The Kaiser is yet again stranded on the tarmac en route as a typhoon rages up the China Coast, and as PAFC sports diplomacy, enterprise success and global brand expansion carries on far to the north.
Without him.
Again.
Krupp has been left fuming in the aftermath of an Extraordinary General Meeting that packed out a hall in the Adelaide Convention Centre, called to vote on changes to the PAFC Constitution. All changes were approved, overwhelmingly - in spite of Krupp campaigning vigorously against any changes at all. It seemed the harder he campaigned, the harder his status quo campaign became.
The changes to the Club Constitution transfer significant decision-making and enactment power away from the Chairman and his directors by:
Krupp swears gutterally to himself. Snatches up the in-flight magazine. Takes as little notice as possible of the red sash diagonally across the cover reading:
- Increasing elected board members from two to maximum of five - thereby cutting the Chairman’s traditional dictatorial powers and his controlling influence over appointments to, and operation of, the PAFC Board - with 1) pre-selection of candidates to be monitored by an independent auditor, 2) the process of assessment of candidates to not be restricted to decision of current members of the PAFC Board or executive, and 3) voting members being made as fully aware as practicable of policies, profiles, qualifications and experience of all candidates via, but not restricted to, open information sessions, club media networks and direct digital mailing.
- Authorising the ‘China Strategy’ as an essential Transformation of PAFC, provided that the interests and future of the Club and its Members are fully protected by the appointment of or election to the PAFC Board of at least two directors with a diversification of China, Asia, Asia-Pacific or other international experience totalling not less than five years each.
- Approving the belatedly established China Committee, consisting of the most efficacious mix of Board members, Club executives, and volunteer Members based either in Australia or overseas, all with appropriate China experience or responsibilities, reporting to the CEO and the PAFC Board.
- Approving the rank of Executive General Manager and the appointment or recruitment of qualified candidates, operating directly below and reporting to the CEO, with separate senior executive responsibilities for 1) Football, 2) Business, 3) China, 4) Communications and 5) Finance, Operations and Administration.
- Approving establishment of a Successful Enterprise Committee - consisting of Board members, Executive General Managers and specialist commercial executives of both the Business and the China divisions, a representative of the Communications division, minimum two representatives of Power Community Ltd., plus selected volunteer Members, reporting to the CEO and Board - with overriding emphasis on ‘successful’ as per title.
- Sanctioning the positioning internationally of permanent full-time staff as and when needed, starting immediately, as approved by the PAFC Board, leading up to the registration of global PAFC offices in selected locations.
CHINA EASTERN AIRLINES IS PROUD TO BE A JOINT MAJOR SPONSOR
OF THE PORT ADELAIDE FOOTBALL CLUB.
You see, when Cathay Pacific’s hacking scandal hit home in Hong Kong, the airline cut its marketing and advertising budget, got rid of accounts that did not rate highly on their scale of priorities or accounts with whom Cathay executives had no personal relationship. Port Adelaide was first to go. The Club’s reaction was to do nothing, except express gratitude that they had an excuse for failure - the hacking. This was an insult to past personnel and volunteers who worked with focus, determination and smarts to not only bring the deluxe carrier, Hong Kong’s own, on board the PAFC China Strategy ... but to be the flagship for it.
Today, with the new Club structure, personnel and purpose, it was a different story. Cathay Pacific had come back to Alberton bearing gifts, to be told that they were too late ... that China Eastern Airlines had put in front of the Club a partnership offer too good to be refused.
EPILOGUE SETTING # 3.
Pro Drinkers Corner across from Happy Valley Race Course, Hong Kong.
Road is reading print version of story from Beijing under byline of Sam Agars accompanied by a panoramic photo taken inside the Great Hall of the People the night before, on the front page of South China Morning Post. He smiles to himself as he takes up a cold stubbie of Tsingtao beer.
ROAD: “Deng Xiaoping, he say something like ... ‘It matters not if the cat or the dog is black or white ... or silver or teal blue ... it’s a good cat if it catches the mouse; it’s a great dog if it catches the rabbit.”
CHINA STATE NET SAYS “THANKS MATE” FROM AFAR
This is the headline for Agars’ article. It has gone viral on the internet, globally, not only in China. It carries a secondary headline.
POWER GIANT RESIDENT DOWN UNDER FOR 20 YEARS SHOWS AUSSIE HEART VIA MASSIVE PARTNERSHIP WITH AFL AND PORT ADELAIDE
LR has seen on his iPad that there is also a prominent report on-line in The Weekend Australian, next to a separate piece under the headline:
FIRB BENDS ITS OWN RULES: APPROVES CHINA STATE NET PURCHASE OF APA GAS PIPELINE
Another headline above a full-page feature article with Rowan Callick’s byline, immediately before the sports section, reads:
SPORTS DIPLOMACY VICTORY CEREMONY IN GREAT HALL - IT TAKES TWO THOUSAND TO TANGO IN BEIJING
A number of contributors to the comments section had made the connection, half in unfriendly terms, sme of the other half several complimenting China State Net for their sense of PR, with one enquiring why it had taken them so long to wake up to the need to condition the market in Australia.
LR has searched the worldwide web. The angle that had amused him most was the New York Times editorial which advised the White House, tongue in cheek, to issue an executive order that everyone involved in the arduous negotiations with China urgently take up Australian Football and fly to Beijing wearing smiles and full Port Adelaide regalia. Obviously it works, observed the Times managing editor
Road goes back to focusing on a face in one of the smaller photos in the Post - the face of an occupant of the main PAFC table in the Great Hall.
Camera pans in until it can be seen, despite pixel deficiency inherent with print media, who it is.
It’s Darren Cahill.
Theme music:
‘The Dragon’ (Vangelis)
Darren is sitting next to Mr. Xiao Junxi.
Mr. Xiao is showing Darren his phone.
Camera tightens further, and we are back to the night before, eye-witnesses up close to what was going on between Darren Cahill, a director of PAFC and tennis coach internationale, and Xiao Junxi, promoted to President, International of China State Gas & Power Net.
We see that on the screen of Xiao’s phone is a sequence of action pictures of his son, now in his late teens, wearing whites ... playing tennis at Wimbledon.
Mr. Xiao points to someone behind his son, sitting in the Wimbledon coaching enclosure.
It’s Roger Federer.
XIAO (via Fu Mingfeng): “Thank you, Darren, for the introduction to Roger.”
CAHILL: “Your son is a keen student, and Roger is a great mentor for your son.”
XIAO: “So are you, Darren. He so loves it in Adelaide. Tennis ... cricket ... AFL ... He so loves Port Adelaide Football Club. We are Port Adelaide. All my family. Always will be.”
The three drink a toast in real, genuine Kwei Zhou brand mou tai.
No phoney ‘li’l ole blue-collar footy club from Alberton’ hogwash tonight.
“Kan bei,” smiles Darren, winks at the camera ... winks at Lockhart Road.
ROAD (winks back): “Thanks Darren. And thanks to your dad, too. Jack was a team-mate of Peter Chant. So was I. Different teams.”
Road takes a swig of his Tsingtao. He shows the label to the camera. Across the bottle is a diagonal red sash.
TSINGTAO BEER IS PROUD TO BE A JOINT MAJOR SPONSOR
OF THE PORT ADELAIDE FOOTBALL CLUB.
Road looks out of the Pro Drinkers Corner. He peers north across the top of the banyans shrouding Happy Valley Race Course. He sees the Hong Kong Football Club’s three-storey main building where PAFC have held reciprocal partnership rights since Grand Final weekend, September 2013, when Russell Ebert brought up the paperwork from Alberton and took back such a glowing report on Hong Kong and the prospects for the Club that Karl Krupp seized on it for himself and herded his tenderfoot board of directors into town in mid May 2014, to stage a business luncheon and a board meeting at the HKFC.
Rick Mattinson had been part of that group, had stayed on in Hong Kong for a few days. Riding on the ‘Star’ Ferry back to the Island after a Chinese dinner in Tsimshatsui with Mr. and Mrs. Road, Mattinson had pointed at the neon signs atop the phalanx of skyscrapers along the Central District, Wanchai and Causeway Bay waterfronts.
MATTINSON: “Up there. I want to see it up there.”
Road, sitting in the Pro Drinkers Corner all these years later, sees it, looks at it, focuses on it, reads it. It is a bright silver neon sign, thickly bordered in black, on top of the building right behind the multi-storey HQ of the Hong Kong Jockey Club next to the HKFC.
No, not the sign that reads WE ARE PORT ADELAIDE ...
The sign above it. The sign with the moving tally, and the big screen with the photo that is turning the tally over, as thousands of Chinese and tourists crowd into Times Square, point up, look up, laugh: “Ho duk yee wor!” in Cantonese, “Mengmeng da!“ in putonghua - “So cute!” - take selfies or photos of each other with the sign in the background, send them all over China, all around the world. Many are searching their phones for the place to sign up ... ...
Theme music:
‘Power Play’ (Eddie and the Tide)
BringBackTheBars
View attachment 681573
369,747
Have Signed the Petition So Far
This photo and yet another article will be in VOGUE China next week. The text will include the agreement by the AFL for Port Adelaide to wear Prison Bars for all home games from now on, including versus Collingwood.
Included, too, will be an article about Darren Cahill ... announcing his newest protege - China’s latest fast-rising international tennis tyro.
Lockhart Road checks the PAFC website on his iPad.
Rick Mattinson, GM International Memberships & Merchandise, is doing a superlative job.
International memberships for the Club have skyrocketed to 119,119.
The Crows, including 50% ‘digital’ fake memberships, are 99,999 and flat.
PAFC is at 220,000, all paid up and rising.
International POWER merchandise sales via PAFC’s eCommerce joint venture in China, first announced on the eve of Jiangwan Stadium II in May 2018, properly launched later via VOGUE China, are going into orbit.
Camera pans out, up up and away ... until the Earth is seen rotating on its axis.
The Great Wall of China can easily be identified.
Music is rising from the planet, voices singing, a ballad, louder, louder, stronger, stronger, the words clearer and clearer.
We have heard this before ... on Thursday, 30 April 2015 ... in the Chairman’s Bar of the Hong Kong Football Club ... after the ANZAC Centenary Luncheon.
It is ‘Power To The People’ by John Schumann ... with his multi-cultural chorus of Chinese footballers and Vietnam Vets.
Screen fills in soft-focus: Mumbles, John E., Eric Edmonds and LR: “To us!”
Scene before final fade-out: Camera looking down paternally on Road and his Nokia C2-01 2011 vintage, left alone in Pro Drinkers Corner: representing the spot from where the strings have been pulled on the PAFC China Strategy, from its immaculate conception to its glorious culmination.
Road thinks back to September 2013, when the deal was done between PAFC and the HKFC, with the latter being likened to either a launchpad or command module. Either way the inference was that China was akin to the Moon as far as Australian Football in general and Port Adelaide in particular were concerned.
The full Moon, sailing along silvery through pumes of cloud, fills the screen.
ROAD (lifts his Tsingtao to it): “Here’s to the quiet little bloke. To Pete.”
LR’s playlist via the hi-fi provides the fade-out music:
‘(If You Believe They Put a) Man on the Moon’ (R.E.M.)
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I thought the bald headed K bloke's name was Klutz not Krupp.
