Our debt would have been wiped out if we did not have to payout staff before contracts had expired.

Exactly why the Juice said MM had a contract to the end of the year and he would review it then
MM chose to turn it into a circus and was sacked accordingly.
If it was left to Juice he would have allowed MM to see out his contract

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If you allow the Government to change the Laws in an emergency
They will create an Emergency to change the Laws

hehe.

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I'd rather not have the debt.

If we have 10 concerns then we have 10 concerns.
Why not get rid of one of them?

Given we will report another $1M loss I wouldnt agree the debt is serviceable.
It is another Cost.

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As woof said bondi, the debt was practically serviced prior to MM's departure. We should be more focussed on membership growth and generating new revenue streams.

The debt isn't any albatross or concern for the club, at all; it is dwarfed by annual revenue alone. Given we've been cost cutting and trimming fat in order to re-build the football department (something that's been a long time coming), are we necessarily going to report a loss?

Do we have much if any in payout figures aside from SR & MM? I guess we'll find out. This isn't anything like the last time we hit rock bottom from a balance sheet perspective. I just wish we weren't relying on Mathieson's shittiest performing assets for a $1-2m profit to offset our losses elsewhere.

_________________
29 different attributes,
And only 7 that you like;
20 ways to see the world,
Or 20 ways to start a fight.

How is the debt secured? Have the AFL gauranteed it or are the billionaires the security? If the latter then that would be one reason they can't extract them from the Board.

They took advice from the ALP
They said not problem you don't have to worry about debt . Really not a concern just keep spending and borrowing you will be fine

_________________
If you allow the Government to change the Laws in an emergency
They will create an Emergency to change the Laws

Probably the only worthwhile comment out of the entire hour interview with Malthouse the other night was about the Carlton Board.

When he mentioned that after he presented to the board and said the list needed blowing up, Whately tried to lead him down the line of suggesting the board dismissed his feedback and told him to go win a flag (or words to that effect), which is certainly a version of events mentioned on this board a few times and in some media outlets - Whately has mentioned it repeatedly, for eg.

Malthouse refuted that suggestion, and said the board was quite accepting of his view, but then followed up with a comment along the lines - after that meeting some board members approached me and said they agreed the list wasn't up to it, some others came up to me and were surprised the list wasn't up to winning a flag. They were shocked we had to prune savagely.

My take - If the board doesn't have a common and informed understanding of where the list is at, what the hell is going on in their meetings? How is this not discussed at board level - clearly it can't have been discussed (or presented to them by Trigg or McKay). If it had been, Malthouse should have been getting consistent feedback from board members.

It really must be a complete mess.

The AFL guarantee it.

Sydney, our membership revenue is seemingly in its third consecutive year of falling, that needs to be addressed before our debt levels. That said, we have less than 18 months to repay the remainder of our Westpac loan, which I suspect will be refinanced before that date. It is not a perilous amount of debt by any measure.

According to last year's financial report we have close to $12m set aside as retained profits, which is close to triple our debt total as of the same date. The concern remains increase revenue and the best ways forward are membership numbers and new revenue streams.

Football, as a profit-making exercise, is quite poor. This is true of many professional sports. The money is made on sponsorships, partnerships, memberships, club-related services, merchandise and outside investment opportunities that don't involve the club brand. Right now we're nailing just the one category in sponsorships, and even that has room for growth in terms of contract figures.

We need to improve there; we shouldn't give a toss about $4m in debt when we've made a profit 4 out of 6 years running.

_________________
29 different attributes,
And only 7 that you like;
20 ways to see the world,
Or 20 ways to start a fight.

They have a football sub-committee, not everyone on the board is focussed with the football operations side of things.

Remember that this address was in the aftermath of the Ratten-era, where the talk was we had the list to challenge. That's why MM was appointed. The idea that some thought things were worse than they were being advised is hardly a shock.

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29 different attributes,
And only 7 that you like;
20 ways to see the world,
Or 20 ways to start a fight.

Thanks, you just made my point for me. The the list isn't an area of focus for them, so why would they have different opinions on it? Surely they would have had a common understanding, based on briefings to the board by Swann/Trigg and McKay.

It's pretty incredible to have board members with completely different viewpoints on something as fundamental as where it's playing list is positioned.

Punter, people of differing viewpoints come together and make decisions every day, and it's called democratic process.

Why is it any different here? Are they all supposed to form the exact same view? I mean if they're stonewalling one another's ideas, that's one thing, but a vigorous debate and difference of opinion should be welcomed if healthy.

_________________
29 different attributes,
And only 7 that you like;
20 ways to see the world,
Or 20 ways to start a fight.

As I see it the point is not so much that the board members had differing views, rather that the views were so disparate in their basis of education.

If the football sub-committee had reported to the board successfully that Malthouse was of the view that we needed a list overhaul then nobody on the board should be saying afterwards they had no idea the list was in poor shape and required attention.

They can disagree on the statement that the list is crap and they can even disagree on the way a rebuild should take place but no board member should have been in the dark as to the coach's opinion of the list. That's a pretty fundamental and concerning breakdown in communication.

Equally as damning, it seems as though I have been foolish to expect that a board member of a footy club has at least a passing interest in the game and should therefore be able to form their own opinion on the quality of our list. Or have enough simples to look at a win/loss record and determine that if there are more Ls than Ws then maybe we might have some issues that need addressing.

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You didn't need to be a football genius to see we weren't building a premiership club during the Ratten era. I can understand the casual fan misunderstanding how good - or otherwise - we were at that point, but if the Board seriously thought we were positioned to challenge when they appointed MM then that is damning evidence of its incompetence.

MM said in the 360 interview that he knew when he took over that we were further away than many people (including the Board) realised. He also said that he was handcuffed against making certain list changes in his first off-season due to contract/TPP issues (not because he was on a book signing tour!). He said he briefed the board very early in the piece about needing a rebuild. The fact that this came as a shock to some of them worries me greatly, because most of them are still there....

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It's never as good as it looks and it's never as bad as it seems.

Spot on, that's what I was trying to say but obviously not as logically as you did.

Of course they are allowed to have different opinions, but the basis from where those opinions were coming from (or perhaps more accurately, the total lack of a basis due to poor/no communication or updates) is pretty frightening. Even if they disagreed with Mick's views, to hear some of them approaching him afterwards to express surprise shows either a lack of communication to the board, or a lack of engagement by the board. There should never be surprises at those meetings (obviously with the exception of immediate crises), particularly something as fundamental as the core business/product of the business which they are governing.

I haven't seen Mick's interview, but am I correct in saying that the anecdote you two are referencing was in regards to his initial assessment of the list and whether or not it could challenge inside 3 years? How would they be in anything other than the dark if they had Ratten's view to go on prior?

That there were secret cynics should be no shock, especially with Mathieson's comments about recruitment over the last 3+ years.

The disparity of opinion is built around the same reasons that would have attracted Malthouse to the club in the first place. The board members who thought we could challenge saw the potential of certain players to be higher than what MM's closer assessment proved, a viewpoint MM himself would have held viewing the club from the outside (a view well held in the media at the time). Some board members didn't agree with the assessment of player potential.

I don't expect board members to get that kind of thing right, not even the sub-committee. I expect them to understand the goals of the football department and help identify and appoint people who offer good approaches and solutions to building a football department. Identifying the true potential of every player on the list involves months of interacting with said player on a near-daily basis. The board would never have time for that...

We can all see the kinds of things a player can do, and can do consistently, but we don't know what they're being told to do, and how much of that they're absorbing, unless we're being told by the coaching staff. We then need to presume that the coaching staff know what they're seeing and that they are in fact capable of communicating instructions effectively. It's important to understand how genuinely convoluted and almost faith-based the whole process is.

The board believed in Ratten until they didn't, the board believed in Malthouse until it didn't. That's pretty much the crux of it. The real questions to be asked are what were they demanding from each of them, and what were they being told?

_________________
29 different attributes,
And only 7 that you like;
20 ways to see the world,
Or 20 ways to start a fight.

It's not satisfactory for the Board to simply blame bad advice.

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It's never as good as it looks and it's never as bad as it seems.

Agreed. The Board should have some idea... supposedly, that's why they are there!

So what's the role of Adrian Gleeson?

No it's not, I agree. Just explaining how much buck passing can occur if people don't establish a proper baseline of performance and seek people that meet and exceed the standards established.

_________________
29 different attributes,
And only 7 that you like;
20 ways to see the world,
Or 20 ways to start a fight.