AFL 2022
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@ACT-Crusader said in AFL 2022:
The Jordan De Goey saga continues. He’s a very good big body mid and Saints could do with one or two of those. But he seems a bit of an egg.
AFL do it better than any other sport in OZ and know how to stay in the news even after their big dance.
I think that has a lot to do with the appetite to be in the news. There's no down side for having bad press for the sport, in the southern states especially. There's no competition. Fans will still love the sport, just develop more hate for the other club that is seen as the villain in this particular story.
So where say rugby may down play a transfer story, AFL will play it up.
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looooooool at Essington
They hire a new CEO. it automatically looks a shit hire given why he was rissoled from his last job (okay yes he "resigned" but come on)
Then it turns out he's a member of one of those pretty crazy churches with some outdated views. This pissed heaps of people off.
New CEO was gone after a day.
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@mariner4life said in AFL 2022:
looooooool at Essington
They hire a new CEO. it automatically looks a shit hire given why he was rissoled from his last job (okay yes he "resigned" but come on)
Then it turns out he's a member of one of those pretty crazy churches with some outdated views. This pissed heaps of people off.
New CEO was gone after a day.
unfortunately that doesn't narrow it down much....
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@Kiwiwomble said in AFL 2022:
@mariner4life said in AFL 2022:
looooooool at Essington
They hire a new CEO. it automatically looks a shit hire given why he was rissoled from his last job (okay yes he "resigned" but come on)
Then it turns out he's a member of one of those pretty crazy churches with some outdated views. This pissed heaps of people off.
New CEO was gone after a day.
unfortunately that doesn't narrow it down much....
yeah fair point
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i missed the best part. The new/former CEO led the review to hire the new CEO and selected himself!!
Fuck that's awesome.
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@mariner4life what?...was he brought in as a external evaluator or something and just selected himself?
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@Kiwiwomble said in AFL 2022:
@mariner4life what?...was he brought in as a external evaluator or something and just selected himself?
in a nutshell, yes
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Joe Aston from the Fin Review rarely misses a punch!
God saved Essendon from Andrew Thorburn
The appointment of the former NAB CEO to run the Essendon Football Club landed like a turd in the punch bowl.
The appointment of former National Australia Bank boss Andrew Thorburn as the CEO of Essendon Football Club landed like a turd in the punch bowl.
The fierce indignation centred on Thorburn’s extracurricular role as the chairman of a church that espouses Old Testament views of homosexuality as a “sexual immorality” and compares abortion to the Holocaust. “Absolutely appalling” is how Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews described these attitudes on Tuesday, and himself as a “disappointed Essendon supporter”.That’s low-hanging fruit, to be sure, but Thorburn’s fire and brimstone side hustle has completely overshadowed two other preposterous ingredients of this story: first, the way in which Thorburn finagled the gig; and second, the Essendon board’s collective delusion in believing him “a man of great integrity and exceptional vision”.
Late on Tuesday, Thorburn resigned just 24 hours into his commission. Earlier in the day, he was defending how “my faith has helped me become a better leader”.
“That’s really what I want people to look at, look at my actions, look at my words as a leader and the organisations I’ve created…”
His last organisation charged customers – including dead ones – more than $650 million in fees for no service, then in the witness stand he tried to dismiss it as carelessness.
This man of great integrity was so soundly flayed by the Royal Commission into Misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation and Financial Services Industry that he was forced to resign immediately upon the release of its final report.
It caused commissioner Kenneth Hayne some umbrage that “Mr Thorburn sought to assert that no one knew this was happening. The money just kept ‘falling into NAB’s pocket’… He sought to portray the charging of fees for no service as a product of poor systems and carelessness. It was, in his words, ‘just professional negligence’… I cannot and do not accept this.”
Rotten culture
Hayne found that “NAB also stands apart from the other three major banks. Having heard from both the CEO, Mr Thorburn, and the chair, Dr [Ken] Henry… I was not persuaded that NAB is willing to accept the necessary responsibility for deciding, for itself, what is the right thing to do, and then having its staff act accordingly … Overall, my fear – that there may be a wide gap between the public face NAB seeks to show and what it does in practice – remains.”
This is unequivocally the description of an unethical organisation whose rotten culture flowed down from the very top.On Monday, Essendon president David Barham boasted that, “to my knowledge, no other AFL club has ever secured the services of an ASX-listed top 10 company CEO to run its club”.
Barham omitted a key adjective here. Thorburn is a disgraced former ASX 10 company CEO. No other AFL club has ever secured the services of a disgraced former ASX 10 company CEO for the very good reason that no other AFL club has ever sought to.
How was it, precisely, that Essendon secured Thorburn’s services? Melbourne’s Herald Sun reported on August 27 that Thorburn had been engaged by Essendon to “conduct an independent review … which will focus on”, among other things, “the appointment of a new CEO”.That’s right, Thorburn did at Essendon Football Club in 2022 precisely what David Gonski did at the Future Fund in 2012 and what Dick Cheney did in 2000 as chairman of George W. Bush’s vice-presidential search committee: he used his position as the headhunter to win the job for himself.
Thorburn even interviewed other (unsuspecting) candidates for the role – memorising the best parts of their pitches, no doubt! – before declaring himself a candidate. How is that ethical?!
Essendon is obviously sensitive about the dreadful optics here, given its torturous explanation of how Thorburn went from refereeing the race to raising the trophy.
You also couldn’t expect Thorburn to fix Essendon’s historically scandalous culture. This is the same guy whose chief of staff defrauded NAB of $5 million without him having a clue. The judge said he found it “absolutely staggering that those frauds were not detected by some appropriate system of internal auditing”.
It is a striking reality that in football today, being on the wrong side of diversity and inclusion issues is considered a far bigger black mark on a person than their questionable integrity or their record of ripping people off.
Barham is quite clearly out of his depth. His first press conference as president – defending the sacking of coach Ben Rutten – goes down as one of the worst in AFL history.
But Essendon is a weird club full of deeply weird people. Thorburn would’ve fit right in.
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@ACT-Crusader holy shit that is a depressingly funny article.
Weirdest club. Convinced of their own importance despite 2 decades of irrelevance on the field, and known more for scandal and poor governance off it.
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@mariner4life Aston is a very perceptive journo that has a good mix of insight, candour and humour
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@ACT-Crusader Joe Aston is a great writer for the AFR.
On the topic of Thorburn, his professional capacity as CEO of NAB should've ensured his name was never in the running before his beliefs became the issue.
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@antipodean said in AFL 2022:
@ACT-Crusader Joe Aston is a great writer for the AFR.
On the topic of Thorburn, his professional capacity as CEO of NAB should've ensured his name was never in the running before his beliefs became the issue.
well, when you select yourself...
"i looked in to my background and found that really i did nothing wrong, so i hired myself"
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What I did find funny ,
On Sen Andy Marr who is a bit of a cheerleader for wokeism , was blasting Essendon for employing someone with these outdated views , but is also a big bacher houli fan , opened up the lines ,
After about ten calls in a row of people calling him a hypocrite because he loves houli and muslims, and they have these same outdated views on homosexuality and abortions , changed subject
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@kiwiinmelb said in AFL 2022:
What I did find funny ,
On Sen Andy Marr who is a bit of a cheerleader for wokeism , was blasting Essendon for employing someone with these outdated views , but is also a big bacher houli fan , opened up the lines ,
After about ten calls in a row of people calling him a hypocrite because he loves houli and muslims, and they have these same outdated views on homosexuality and abortions , changed subject
I think it's one thing for a player to have those views, but another thing to have your CEO hold them.
And not just attend the church but be the President or Chairman or whatever he was...
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For the commentators who are busy telling us all he couldn't be inclusive and be part of the church...
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@antipodean So? Just a drafted quote in a media release that he probably never saw. Also before he was Chairman of said church.
I also love the outcry from Peter Dutton and the Sky News types. Always the first to decry 'don't mix politics and sport' when a player takes a knee or makes a statement, but don't waste a second before giving us their thoughts on the Essendon Bombers hiring and firing policies.
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@barbarian said in AFL 2022:
@antipodean So? Just a drafted quote in a media release that he probably never saw. Also before he was Chairman of said church.
I don't follow this line of reasoning. Would he oversee all media releases at Essendon? Did he only come to his religious beliefs as chairman of his church?
I also love the outcry from Peter Dutton and the Sky News types. Always the first to decry 'don't mix politics and sport' when a player takes a knee or makes a statement, but don't waste a second before giving us their thoughts on the Essendon Bombers hiring and firing policies.
They're just as bad as their opposites.
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@antipodean said in AFL 2022:
@barbarian said in AFL 2022:
@antipodean So? Just a drafted quote in a media release that he probably never saw. Also before he was Chairman of said church.
I don't follow this line of reasoning. Would he oversee all media releases at Essendon? Did he only come to his religious beliefs as chairman of his church?
I do think there is a distinction between being a member of a church congregation and the Chairman of said church.
If he was fired merely because he was attending a church then I think that's too far. But if he's the leader (and therefore much more accountable for the direction of the church) then I think it's fair game to consider that when it comes to his position as CEO.
Frankly as Joe Aston points out it's not actually the issue that should have prevented his hiring, but I do think it should have been considered more than it was at the time.
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@kiwiinmelb said in AFL 2022:
What I did find funny ,
On Sen Andy Marr who is a bit of a cheerleader for wokeism , was blasting Essendon for employing someone with these outdated views , but is also a big bacher houli fan , opened up the lines ,
After about ten calls in a row of people calling him a hypocrite because he loves houli and muslims, and they have these same outdated views on homosexuality and abortions , changed subject
I heard that and I was almost ready to ring up!
There’s contradictions all round on this whole thing.
Part of me says, the whole appointment process was a bit of a schmozzle but not without precedent. But this is a club that is in the firing line and many are relishing in their demise - so squeaky clean or don’t do it.
Part of me says, there are those that delight in bringing religion/social issues/politics into sport because it does get Aussies fired up and gives journos stuff to write about that’s a bit different than the actual sport.
Part of me says, sucked in Essendon.
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@barbarian said in AFL 2022:
@antipodean said in AFL 2022:
@barbarian said in AFL 2022:
@antipodean So? Just a drafted quote in a media release that he probably never saw. Also before he was Chairman of said church.
I don't follow this line of reasoning. Would he oversee all media releases at Essendon? Did he only come to his religious beliefs as chairman of his church?
I do think there is a distinction between being a member of a church congregation and the Chairman of said church.
If he was fired merely because he was attending a church then I think that's too far. But if he's the leader (and therefore much more accountable for the direction of the church) then I think it's fair game to consider that when it comes to his position as CEO.
I think that neatly summarises the modern era - where the judgment based on perception rules without evidence, or even contrary to. I wonder how he discharged his duties for the Victorian Equal Opportunity & Human Rights Commission as a conservative Anglican.
Frankly as Joe Aston points out it's not actually the issue that should have prevented his hiring, but I do think it should have been considered more than it was at the time.
