‘Not if that chairman was you’: The brutal exchange that sparked the AFL’s quiet revolution

The mismanagement and hostility that characterised last year’s search for a new AFL Commission chairman can be best summed up by the exchange between Richard Goyder and David Koch on the eve of the 2025 finals.

Port Adelaide chairman Koch was a commission candidate who had told other presidents he did not expect to win the nomination but wanted to play a part in ensuring the process was sound given chairman Goyder’s unwillingness to step away from the role.

Goyder was part of a group of commissioners and presidents interviewing candidates with the understanding that whoever won the job would become chairman. No women were among the final candidates. He asked the 14-year club president Koch whether he would be prepared to serve on the commission under another chair.

“Yes, Richard,” Koch responded. “But not if that chairman was you.”

Almost one year after that clumsy search for a new chairman, and close to a season since Goyder’s protracted departure, the prevailing view among the clubs is that the end has justified the means given Craig Drummond’s promising start as Goyder’s replacement.

It has also been an astute beginning by Drummond, the former Geelong president, who has worked closely with the club presidents to restructure the process leading to the appointment of commissioners and handing the clubs practical power that they felt they lost under Goyder. All agree the commission requires dynamic new blood.

Drummond has spent his first few months engaging heavily with every key stakeholder in the game and notably clubs, supporters, umpires and media. But his first definitive move as chairman was to announce a governance overhaul to ensure that a repeat of the 2025 mess never happens again.

This timing is appropriate, given the challenges facing the game. Not only has the NRL under Peter V’landys trumped the AFL with its new seven-year, $5.3 billion broadcast deal, but it has also strategically outsmarted the AFLW in its progression of NRLW.

Drummond’s commission has also acknowledged the code’s failure to grow the game across western Sydney and its crucial challenge to engage non-traditional supporters.

Goyder’s commission delayed the introduction of football expertise to the AFL board – which was lacking when Andrew Ireland and Matt de Boer joined in late 2023 – by more than two years.

Furthermore, some presidents felt railroaded when Goyder introduced investment banker Robin Bishop in 2017. Bishop was ultimately passed by the nominations committee, but the clubs remained bruised by the process.

The months leading up to Drummond’s appointment were punctuated by procedural confusion and infighting between certain presidents and some commissioners.

Goyder, by then a commissioner for 16 years and chairman for nine, told colleagues he wanted to remain on board for another year to see his successor in.

Despite engaging a specialist recruiter, the final candidates were all former club presidents: Drummond, Koch, Jeff Browne and Peter Gordon. Gordon was introduced into the bruising process relatively late by key commissioners and finished as collateral damage, given the public nature of the search.

Some presidents on the nominations committee felt marginalised and disrespected, but ultimately the presidents had their way and Goyder agreed to stand down.

Under the AFL’s constitution, three presidents could have put forward an alternative candidate to the chairman at the league’s annual general meeting in March and that potentially damaging public spat, which would have been detrimental to the competition, was avoided.

In March, Drummond introduced nine-year term limits for commissioners, allowing an extra three-year term for those appointed as chairs. This change would have seen Goyder depart some years earlier and would lead to a staged exit of four commissioners over the next 18 months.

Paul Bassat, in his 15th season as a commissioner and whom Goyder pushed to remain on board this year, and Gabrielle Trainor (10 years) are expected to depart next March with Andrew Newbold and Simone Wilkie, who both joined the commission in 2016, stepping down the following year. Bishop would follow soon after.

A nomination committee charter ensuring the integrity and transparency of the selection process, and giving the clubs a bigger say in forming the AFL’s governors, is on the verge of being approved by the commission.

The charter would also preclude an AFL chief executive from becoming a commissioner until they have been out of the job for nine years – a move which would thwart a mooted push to bring Gillon McLachlan onto the commission in the short term.

The new nomination committee is expected to meet this month, made up of five club presidents and three commissioners – including chairman Drummond. The clubs for the first time have won the power to select their own representatives, which were previously anointed by the commission chairman.

That process was finalised in recent weeks. The clubs were broken into four categories to ensure adequate representation. Gold Coast president Bob East was chosen by the northern clubs, West Coast’s Elizabeth Gaines by the SA and WA clubs, Barry Carp (Collingwood) by the bigger Victorian clubs, and the Western Bulldogs’ Kylie Watson-Wheeler by the smaller Victorian clubs. Richmond’s John O’Rourke is the fifth club representative.

The Victorian clubs were categorised by the presidents as “Victoria A” and “Victoria B”. In something of a faux pas, Essendon were initially placed alongside the Bulldogs, Melbourne, North Melbourne, and St Kilda. A protest ensued, and the Bombers were switched to Victoria A.

Koch and GWS chairman Tim Reed oversaw the process demanding at least two women represent the clubs and that no president who took part last year would remain on the nomination committee. Tasmania was not represented. Drummond has employed an external recruitment firm and will finalise the selection panel in the coming weeks.

Growing the game looms as the top priority in the search for new AFL governors as it broods over new media, the struggling women’s game, diminishing numbers of Indigenous players, expansion issues outside the heartland, and the complexities surrounding the Tasmania Devils’ introduction in 2028.

Eight years after the first NRLW State of Origin clash at North Sydney Oval, the AFLW will stage an Australia-Ireland clash at the same sold-out venue amid criticism that the stage should have been more ambitious. NRLW representative games now outrate AFL fixtures.

The presidents’ view is that while recent innovations – notably Gather Round and a new round of State of Origin games – have proved wildly profitable in terms of government dollars and successful among the traditional support base, they have done little for expansion.

As chief executive Andrew Dillon, too, searches for external talent to achieve that end outside his own executive – outgoing Giants boss Dave Matthews has been recruited to look at international expansion and a potential 20th team – there are positive signs that the political infighting and campaigning that accompanied Richard Goyder’s last days are a distant memory.

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