tried before, its pointless, especially to a man who thinks culture doesn't exist. pundits have regularly said there are 'problems' between Richmond and the AFL for last 2 years. Hocking bringing in stand rule to rein in us, I think you don't buy that so whatever, the Womens side, Caro said at the time we were shafted, Peggy alluded to it but alluded might be a bit subtle right? There are many more individual examples that have been discussed thoughtfully and compellingly on here.
I don't buy those things because the prosecution is weak. The stand rule theory was born because a third tier Herald Sun journo wrote something like 'it is believed Hocking observed Trent Cotchin working the mark in the hub' or something similar. No quotes, no facts, just weak half speculation. I've never seen any evidence beyond that.
As for the AFLW rejection the first episode of the Originals podcast on the RFC website is worth a listen where O'Neal and Gale discuss it. They essentially say we thought we had a really strong bid and can't understand why it was rejected. I'd imagine that's how anyone who ever prepared a rejected submission would feel. It's human nature.
Gale also says “I think the thing we did learn is you’ve got to really lobby. Lobby really hard. You’ve got to push you’ve got to politick, you’ve got to influence. And we probably thought we were above that, to be honest,”
“And maybe it was a hubris. We probably thought: we’re strong in this space, we’ve got a really strong record and we deserve a licence.”
So there's at least a sense that maybe we were too comfortable and didn't go hard enough to make our case. He also says at another point that the strongest part of our bid was having a female president. Not sure about that logic either.
When you talk about thoughtful and compelling arguments here's where I sit. You've got a very successful organisation in the AFL who are about to make one of it's biggest investments of all time in creating a new female competition, a competition that is facing enormous challenges in terms of finances and support. The suggestion is then that the AFL look at a group of bids, one of whom is from a very successful club with a huge supporter base and say you know what, we desperately want this competition to work, we've got a huge amount of money riding on it, and that is a great bid but we don't like them so stuff them. I'm afraid I don't find that logic thoughtful or compelling.
As usual, I dont agree in the main with TBR. My view is that it was actually a bit of a spiteful post.
It's not a spiteful post at all. It's a post considering reasons why Gale might not be a favoured candidate as AFL CEO beyond just the AFL hate us.
I'm genuinely curious as to why Gale doesn't seem to be in the mix for the job and as I don't buy the anti-Richmond AFL angle, I'm looking for what the reasons might be.
People need to get over this idea that questioning or criticising Richmond people is out of bounds. Just like anyone they have strengths and weaknesses and it is ok to discuss them.
