Changing culture ain’t easy.
There is a nexus between the individual and a winning culture. At Richmond Footy Club, this nexus was broken in the 1980s.
Kevin Sheedy, Royce Hart, Francis Bourke, Kevin Bartlett, *smile* Clay, Barry Richardson and John Northey were always winners. They broke in the senior team together, won premierships almost instantly and kept winning them. They established a winning culture and maintained it for years. Older players from less successful clubs like Robbie McGhie, Wayne Walsh, Paul Sproule, Barry Rowlings, Mick Malthouse came to Richmond and thrived under the winners’ culture. Young players like David Cloke, Kevin Morris, Bryan Wood, Geoff Raines, Robert Wiley, Mark Lee, Dale Weightman and Jim Jess also thrived in that culture.
By the early 1980s, the winning culture was in the hands of Cloke, Raines, Weightman, Wood, Wiley and Lee. Almost to a man, they left the club together, leaving Weightman, Lee and Jess to pass the culture on to the next generation. The chain was broken.
In the early to mid 1970s, we had the most successful Under 19 program and this translated into an assembly line of future stars. By the mid 1980s, we still had a very successful Under 19 program and this translated into not much. Jeff Hogg, the Pickerings, the Bowers, Alan MacKellar and others came out of this program straight into a team that was losing every week and struggled to reach anywhere near their potential because the winning culture was lost.
So how do we get it back? I can think of a few examples where it has already happened.
North Melbourne had been perennial losers until they convinced Barassi to join them and they embarked on a campaign to import leaders to their club, Barry Davis, Rantall, Doug Wade, Barry Cable and Malcolm Blight. They just went out and bought leaders, a luxury which is not really available now, although free agency may help in a year or two.
Essendon did it by appointing Sheedy. Essendon had a group of young leaders like Watson, Simon Madden and Van Der Haar. He found the Danihers and made them winners, just like he and his young mates at Richmond had been. Again, the secret was the identification and encouragement of the right leaders.
Brisbane turned it around when Leigh Matthews came along and encouraged his hard-nosed leadership group of Voss, the Scott brothers, Leppitsch, Lappin, Akermanis etc. Again, the change came from the leaders, not necessarily the most talented players, the leaders.
Roos did it at Sydney. Ordinary players like Ben Matthews, Jared Crouch, Stuart Maxfield, Brett Kirk, Leo Barry etc etc took on the task of changing their culture. They were leaders.
Geelong are the most recent team to do it, stripping back their squad to dot around 2001 and slowly finding and encouraging strong leaders.
Of these examples, the ones that approximate our current situation are the North Melbourne one from the early 70s and the Brisbane one. In the other cases, the teams were vaguely competitive anyway and had reasonable winning percentages before their cultural revolution. It was an easier task.
There is a very strong argument for Richmond to start again with a clean slate and trade or attract a completely new leadership group from other clubs. Do we really expect 20-24 year-olds like Deledio, Cotchin, Jackson and Foley, all infants in the experience stakes, most of whom have yet to play in 40 wins over their careers to go nose-to-nose against the likes of Ablett, Mooney, Bartel and Enright, Chapman and Johnson.?
Joel Selwood, despite playing only three full seasons, has already played in more winning teams than Brett Deledio. See the problem?
Appointing a coach from winning cultures is a good start. Hardwick has at least experienced this process of change at Hawthorn and he knows that they key element is finding and encouraging leaders. Hodge, Sam Mitchell and Croad hadn’t played in too many winning teams before Clarkson and co came along, so there is hope.
We need to find leaders who are capable of winning games of football through inspiration, through individual effort and through example.
