I ROBOT

Posted June 12, 200817 yr

I ROBOT by Whispering Jack

Thirty years ago I was part of a group of Demon supporters who met with the then club chairman John Mitchell to discuss our concerns about the direction of the Melbourne Football Club which was in dire straits and heading towards a wooden spoon after a decade of dismal on field results. We were well received, the discussion was pleasant and, in the end, not much came of the meeting.

Not that we had much to do with it, but I'd like to believe that at least a small seed for change at the club was planted at the time. Some of our group even had stints on the club Board in the ensuing years and others had a direct involvement in some capacity from time to time. This period saw the club breaking away from the Melbourne Cricket Club and the return of club icon Ron Barassi as a coach coming in with a five year plan to restore us to our former greatness. We saw the implementation of the Irish experiment that gave us a Brownlow Medallist in Jimmy Stynes and another great in Sean Wight and the development of our junior ranks so that in the early years of John Northey's coaching stint, the Demons eventually made the finals again after more than two decades in the wilderness.

The best laid plans don't always work out. We also had Sir Billy Snedden, who not long before had been a heartbeat away from the highest office in the country, presiding over the club. The troubles continued and Sir Billy prevailed for a while before going on to other things.

The club prospered for a while without achieving the ultimate honour of a premiership but soon it seemed that it was going nowhere fast. Then some bright sparks came up with the idea of a merger with the Hawks, so the troubles continued.

The official figures tell us that the members voted the club out of existence on a wild and woolly September night in 1996 but the Hawthorn membership wouldn't allow their club to die. An unlikely white knight came along to save the Melbourne Football Club and, after a while, the troubles continued.

Joseph Gutnick had come on to the scene and put stacks of his own money into the club but others on the Board had a different vision. Caesar was an honourable man but, when the moment was right, Brutus wielded the sharpest of knives. Or was it perhaps that Caesar fell on his sword?

It didn't matter in the end because the members voted in their thousands on a summer night in December 2001 with the largest number of votes cast in any football club election in the history of the game. Not all of us were happy with the outcome but the membership, in its wisdom, had elected the next saviour. And the troubles continued.

The next saviour departed almost two years to the day later via the back door. By that time the club had a massive debt and the rump of the Board which presided over the AGM that year hardly resembled a team and seemed to be without any vision for the future - at least on that night.

The pieces were picked up by Paul Gardner and things were going along reasonably until the on field team, wracked by injuries, hit a road block at the start of 2007 and performed well below expectations. The turnover of staff both football and non-football related was high, the money stopped rolling in, storm clouds threatened and the troubles continued.

The excitement of the brilliant celebration of the club's 150th anniversary was still reverberating in my head when I was confronted by the early edition of the Sunday Sun and its front page article setting out Jimmy Stynes' vision of the future for the Melbourne Football Club. It was lousy timing but that's the modern media for you.

The revelations that Stynes had a new board in place ready to take out the existing board, of Paul Gardner's resignation and of the bloodless coup that was about to take place leaves one with a feeling that we as members have very little say in the direction of our club. The only ones who seemingly had any influence on the outcome on behalf of thousands of other members were three men - vice President John Phillips and directors Michael Coglin and Anthony Starkins who took a principled stand and insisted on proper disclosure and a viable plan for the future from those about to assume power at the club. If the messages in today's media are correct then it seems that their concerns have been satisfied. I guess that we'll know in a few hours.

Seven years ago, the members voted to change the direction of the club. Today, we are mere robots who don't have the privilege or the power to effect that change or to even to decide whether or not it's necessary. We no longer have a say in the future of the club but we will go along with Jimmy Stynes because of our hope, our loyalty and the knowledge of the sacrifices he personally has made for the club in the past. We're pinning a lot of faith in one small group of people and I just hope that they understand that it is we, the now disenfranchised robots, who give what is, in the main, our unconditional support for the club, who buy the membership tickets, who constantly support and defend it and, above all, who want it to be free of trouble and to succeed.