Smorgan is a multimillionaire, he could have paid out Pagan from his own pocket.
The problem was guts not money.


Yes, it was rubbish.
And it would have been utterly reprehensible to then sack Mithell for their mistake.


At least they've fixed it now.

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don't ask me, I'm just a lizard

The problem isn't Pagan, and isn't Mitchell. The problem is Sticks.

Given Mitchell's chasing of $$$ during his playing career, could you honestly expect him to resign? It fell to Sticks to make a hard call on one of his mates for the betterment of the club, which he failed to do. The one disappointment I have had with Swann is his failure to sort this situation out the second he walked in the door. Perhaps he didn't want to get off-side with Sticks off the bat?

For a team that has been preaching 'club before the individual', this situation has been a farce.

Caro wrote a piece after Swann's arrival about the Pagan/Mitchell situation. She said that Swann was intending to resolve it (implying by sacking Mitchell) but received a visit from Sticks saying that the Board had guaranteed Mitchell's position. When Swann arrived, the Board had fingers in all of the administrative pies by virtue of having executive directors on committees that controlled the administrative side of things.

If she was right, then Swann wouldn't have been able to sack Mitchell. He would have been required to comply with specific directives from the Board, and expending a lot of political capital to overturn that directive would have been unwise when he was moving to wrest control of the administation from the executive directors.

Sticks was very much a central character in that sage according to Caro.

It's really a dead duck now, Mitch can stay because the real problem has been terminated.

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"We used to sit around and talk about how bad the game plan was." Anthony Koutoufides

You can't expect anyone to resign for the good of the club (whether you're a player who can't play any more at the required level e.g. Hamill or Voss, or a coach or assistant coach).

But the club has to make decisions for the benefit of the club and never because it owes a moral obligation of some sort to a player or coach.

The decision to retain both Pagan and Mitchell was bad for the club. If Sticks and Gleeson wanted to retain Mitchell after Pagan was confirmed because they would have let him down if they'd sacked him, then that's outrageous from an organisational point of view. If they had a conflict of interest, they should have stood aside from decisions on that issue. Others who weren't involved might have been able to make a more objective decision. And Swann was the most independent person imaginable and he should have been left to do what he thought was best. After all, it was squarely within the usual responsibility of a CEO.

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There's so much I could say...

Swan went in there with an open mind watching and observing and after 2/3rds of the season fixed the problem on Monday.

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"We used to sit around and talk about how bad the game plan was." Anthony Koutoufides

Pagan's refusal to talk to Mitchell was the most unprofessional thing I've seen at a professional club. Pagan couldn't put his ego aside for the good of the club to commincate with his assistant. He put himself and his fragile pride before the club. He got big bucks to coach our club to the best of his ability and as such should've been forced to talk to him. This episode was an absolute blight on Pagan. He was dreadful in every wat imaginable. At least he's gone now as he should.

To repeat, the article that started this noted that Pagan had complained of Mitchell undermining him in September - and that was before he made a presentation to the Board.

A coach needs to be able to trust those who are delegated important responsibilities, otherwise he'll try to limit the delegation and access of those who he doesn't trust. Pagan was presented with a choice between a bad option and an even worse one.

Good management would have avoided that dilemma. Either Pagan or Mitchell should have been sacked at the beginning of the year. That failure has cost us 8 months of development work.

Don't worry about repeating. It was Pagan's responsibilty as senior coach to talk to hos assistants irrespective of anything. No ifs, not butts. The club is supposed to work as one and that starts with the boss. He's not there to stroke his own ego. It was grossly unprofessional. I don't care if he thought he was undermined. That's irerlevant. it's only his "say so" anyway. Once the decision was made he was getting paid $600, 000 a year to coach, not to keep his fragile pride in tact and part of that is communicating with your assistants. If he had've spoken to Mitchell then it wouldn't be a problem. Simple. If you don't like your working conditions, especially at the rate of pay he was on, then you pi$$ off. That 8 months of stalled development was purely at Pagan's feet. I was happy to see Mitchell "win" this one. Let's face it, you backed a loser.

A great move.
Get off Mitchell's back.Does a damn good job.
Truth is Mitchell had the balls to speak up and alert the hierachy as to how bad things were.........Loyalty ? Who did Mitchell owe his loyalty to ? Denis Pagan ot the Carlton FC ?.........The CFC everytime.All the others were muttering under there breath and talking around corners.So for mine,Mitchell should be praised rather than pilloried.

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All my dangerous friends

Let's wait until the end of the year. Then we'll be able to say whether his "win" was a pyrrhic victory.

Even those who believe he was well-intentioned will shrink from employing someone marked as a white ant. As an example, in political and commercial circles, whistleblowers might be seen as performing an important function, but they tend to find it hard to find alternative employment.

But there may be those who believe the worst of him, and presumably Pagan will be willing to share his experience with coaches who contact him. Needless to say, they'll blackball him.

He will have to hope that his mates are able to give him a helping hand.

But the real loser is CFC.

Hopefully, we'll find out at some stage what the alleged undermining was.

If it was giving his honest opinion about the coaching situation, then your opinion would be fair enough. That theory tends to suffer a bit though when it's remembered that Sticks was and is the chairman of the selection committee and has always had close associations with some of our senior players. Anyone who thinks that Sticks needed Mitchell to tell him what was going on in the football department is a bit naive.

But if, for instance, he was getting in the ear of the Carlton-listed VFL players to spread dissent, then you'd be wrong. (And I'm not implying that this is what happened as I don't know).

A good development coach eh! Yeah the bullants finals series was a good development pad for the Carlton Football club, it showed the duds how to play finals football for when they made them in local league finals series

Absolutely no development for the younger guys, just another mates muppet is Barry Mitchell. Felt he owed the Deluca's of this world a premiership.

Pffffft.

[/quote]Pagan's refusal to talk to Mitchell was the most unprofessional thing I've seen at a professional club. Pagan couldn't put his ego aside for the good of the club to commincate with his assistant. He put himself and his fragile pride before the club. He got big bucks to coach our club to the best of his ability and as such should've been forced to talk to him. This episode was an absolute blight on Pagan. He was dreadful in every wat imaginable. At least he's gone now as he should.[/quote]

This is how I saw the situation as well. Pagan made the whole coaching and development situation untenable. We could never move forward with his stance and I have yet to see anyone gain respect from actions such as his. In doing that Pagan thought he was above the club. This action alone should have seen him dismissed. Maybe our QC on the board could have fought any legal action by Pagan for any dismissal claim.

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"can't kick ... don't pick"

It certainly makes you think, doesn't it? Why wouldn't the club have insisted on Pagan talking to Mitchell? If they'd done that, then as you say he could have been sacked without any payout. I wonder why they didn't do that?

The answer is that the club would have done this if they could have done so. So why didn't they?

Perhaps because the club didn't have the right to make that demand. Perhaps because Pagan had the right to hire and fire within the football department.

And if that's the case, the club was in breach by overriding his wishes in re-appointing Mitchell. Something that appears to have been recognised by his removal from Princes' Park and removal from the development role within the Football Department.

So come again as to why he wasn't within his rights?

Indie you really need to get over this Mitchell white anting Pagan buisness. PAgan had the perfect opportunity to prove that he was the right man for the job and all accounts he failed dismally

All he had to do was produce a side that was properly prepared each week and a side that was competitive He failed to do it week in and week out. If he was doing a good job then Mitchells so called white anting would have fallen on deaf ears .

Pagan failed in all aspects of what a successful coach should have been doing and because of this he is now out of a job. He should have been shown the door 16 games ago but he was given another 16 games to prove himself and he failed again .

If this team would have lost every game and showed some fighting spirit not a supporter at the club would have doubted Pagans coaching methods . But week in week out we dished up rubbish

So move on and stop making excuses for him

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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

Good try, SB.

If you hadn't noticed, the Mitchell and Pagan standoff is smack bang in the middle of the topic. There's another topic about Pagan being sacked, and I'm sure you can air your views there.

You haven't any views about the standoff it seems. Fair enough. Some people don't. Good for you.

Indie what is so unusual about someone having ambitions for the top job and the person in the top job not liking the ambitious one - Particually when there is a fair chance that the ambitious one could have been doing a better job than his boss. You see stand offs like this in nearly every organisation around the country . What usually occurrs is the person in the top job shows the ambitious one why he is there . In this case it didn't happen

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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

SB, I have no problems with an assistant attempting to outshine a senior coach. If that's all that was going on, no problems.

But Mitchell's connections to Sticks and Gleeson muddy the waters. If he was conducting a campaign for numbers amongst the playing group and destabilising the club, that's not on. If that's what was going on, then it would be no surprise that Pagan tried to isolate him.

So it depends on what was happening.

But this isn't simply a retrospective. The reason why it has currency is because the club should have moved to prevent this fiasco from damaging our club over the last 8 or 9 months. That means it should have either sacked Pagan when it became apparent that he would not accept Mitchell, or it should have sacked Mitchell.

This is why there is disquiet about the roles of Sticks and Gleeson. They are still at the club and in positions of power and influence. If this fiasco was a case of them putting their mate ahead of the club's best interests, then they have to go. Simple as that. We have a say in that. Presumably, Sticks will have to run for re-election this year. I, for one, will be voting against him.

But you are right that Mitchell's position is no longer an issue. Ratten is prepared to work with him, and for the good of the club he should return to the football department and help out with development. At the end of the year, he may be lucky or the new coach might not want him. But if the incoming coach retains him because he believes he is the best man for the job, then that's cool.