And so it ends in tears. When Gus came on board and started making changes I thought we had a chance to become the 'super club" we could have been over the 40 years, given the right leadership. We may have had success as a licensed business but that wasn't what the club should have been about and the football side of the club was pathetic given its resources. The board seemed only interested in building a bigger licensed club, rather than doing what it was set up for and that was to support the football team.
Now we will drift back into a little provincial club with the board hiring its mates and making poor decisions about the salary cap, coaches and junior development. If you thought 3 years of semis was "meh" because we didn't make the grand final, wait until you see what happens now with Dave and his mate. Watch it all unravel and see our juniors return to the mediocrity they were before Gus made changes to the pathways.
It is not Gus leaving that is the problem, it is the way he is leaving. If he left on his own terms we may have had the right handover process in place, but instead Gus is leaving with too many loose ends and nobody to do the work he has been doing.
The philosophy and actions of the Board have been upside down since the moment Don Feltis took over as Chairman. The role the Board have assigned themselves makes management almost untenable - it has been so for close on 10 years now. The recent Gould-Bennett / O'Neill- Cleary episode is just a single case in point.
The debacle that it is now, has been covered up by profligate spending in the football club financed by the sale of assets - profit generating assets that had been built up to ensure football could be securely financed into the future. The slide down from here - fi there is one and i think there will be - will partially be due to the incompetent and dumb Chairman/CEO combo- but more so to the fact that the spending will have to stop. I suspect Gus actually wants out because he is smart enough to know that the club is trading poorly, they have sold the gaming revenue for the next 5 years, there are few assets left to sell and the management team at club level is not a patch on its competitors.
Gould has done plenty when it comes to building player pathways, structures etc but he has nothing, zip, to building anything that resembles revenue / profit generation in the football club. Don't say it wasn't his job - his title was GENERAL MANAGER - Football. Jesus, even their spruiking about record memberships was baseless given that some 50% of memberships were freebies.
Gus should be given credit where it is due but to suggest that he is, was, or could be some sort of saviour is over the top - especially when looking at the club beyond what happens around the field and the players.
And if you look at the history of our club - there was a massive change in 1984. A plan was put in place at the time - it was a 5 year plan, the plan was to have 5 of our juniors playing for Australian in 5 years. That was eiether achieved or very close. By 1991 - a little shorter than the amount of time Gus has had - we have 3 semi-final appearances, 2 GF appearances and 1 premiership - without accumulating massive unsustainable losses. Perhaps we should return to the same sort of management principles that were in practice then.
