76woodenspooners
Brownlow Medallist
Poll above
In the aftermath of some of the recent upheavals at clubland, there seems to be a bit of confusion about how clubs are run and what the people do. It’s difficult to have any kind of rational debate about whether the President / Board / Footy Director should be sacked if there’s no understanding about what those roles actually are.
I’ll have a crack at what I reckon it is with my very amateur understanding. Feel free to provide your own version. All clubs will be different, and I’m basing my knowledge of what I know about my club (which may have no bearing on reality )
The members:. At the very top of the whole structure are the members. In particular, they are the voting members. Not all members are necessarily voting members - Flossy the Sheep may have her pet membership fully paid up but it doesn’t mean that she has any control over her club what-so-ever. Voting members are typically members who are allowed to attend Annual General Meeting(AGM) (Held annually sometime between October and February) where the board tables the financial auditor reports and reports to the members anything of interest about the running of the club. In theory the AGM is the place where new board members are voted in, but in practice it seems to rarely happen ... but that’s a discussion for another rabbit hole. Sometimes rival tickets are put together to take over the board - the most recent being the “Focus on football” ticket at Richmond around three years ago, but I’ll let the tigers folks speak to what happened with that.
The President / The Chairman. Some clubs call the role President (Eg: Collingwood), other clubs call it the role Chairman (Eg: Swans). I dunno what the difference is, but it’s probably got something to do with the club’s constitution which I’ll get to. The role of the President / Chairman is to be the Chairman at board meetings, and the President/Chairman has the casting vote in the event of a split vote on a board vote (eg: Carlton have 8 board members, if a vote ends up 4 yes, and 4 no; then the vote goes the way of the President’s casting vote). In the case of some clubs the President is the spokesperson for the board (Port Adelaide) but it doesn’t have to be that way (Carlton). The Present / Chairman are one member of the board ...
The board of directors. The board, led by the President, represent the interests of the members (hence why they are technically voted in by members even if that doesn’t really happen in practice). The board are responsible for governance matters, which basically means that they oversee that the organisation is following Australian laws (Corporations law, Taxation law, Employment law, etc, etc), and the laws of the competition (AFL) and the laws of the club (club constitution). Part of that means that they monitor that the organisation does not trade whilst insolvent (ie: organisation does not go broke) They also set the long term strategic direction of the organisation (eg: policy on getting into female sport, or big infrastructure spend would be a board matter), and they are responsible for appointing key office holders (eg: CEO, senior coach, head of football). Part of the strategic direction may include directing organisational culture and values - eg: attitudes towards women, indigenous community, equal opportunity, etc, etc over and above what is required by law. The board (including President / Chairman) are voluntary roles. They typically hold a board meeting once a month, although they can convene emergency board meetings when necessary. One special board meeting is the AGM which is held with the voting members and is described above. Minutes (records) of meetings will be kept in the event that authorities ever need to check that the board has been operating properly. In practice, the board don’t do all this work themselves, they delegate it to others to do and the board oversee it and approve the work. In the case of the club financials, they receive a financial audit report from an external accounting firm (eg: EY, KPMG, PWC, Deloitte’s). The board’s conduit into the organisation is mainly through the CEO, but from time to time they may call for presentations by the head of football or other senior management roles (eg: head of Membership, head of sponsorship). The board hold the CEO to account. The board may also ensure that matters of risk are being identified and addressed by the organisation. An unofficial role of boards is to exercise their rolodexes for the benefit of the organisation (kiddies, google rolodex) for activities like sponsorship and fund raising, although they need to be careful to ensure that they don’t create conflict of interest situations.
The constitution: All clubs have a constitution which specifies their organisation type (not for profit), ownership structure, owners liability, what the purpose of the organisation is, voting procedure, and various curious arcane tidbits of interest. In the case of some clubs (Collingwood) this document is referred to as The articles of association. The_Wookie has links to all these documents if you’re interested in reading your club’s.
The CEO The Chief Executive Officer is the top of the organisation chart within the club. They make sure that the board’s strategic direction is being carried out, that the organisation is functioning effectively: Management are doing their jobs. Bills and wages are getting paid. Maintenance is being performed. Members are being informed. Etc, etc. The CEO doesn’t really do much work themselves - in a perfectly run company where everything is ticking over the CEO sits in their office board with not much to do, but in practice they’d be keeping quite busy. The CEO reports to the board. The CEO is the conduit with the AFL on commercial matters.
The coterie groups These are private groups that exist outside of the club’s organisational structure, typically made up of wealthy / powerful individuals, who fundraise (and potentially lend their Rolodexes) for the benefit of the club. Not sure how they connect through to the club - through the membership dept? I don’t know much about them, but have included here for completeness.
Head of football. The role of the head of football is to ensure that the Senior Coaches (AFL, VFL, AFLW, VFLW, NEAFL, SANFL have all the resources at their disposal to do their job effectively. They also hold the Senior coach to account. I believe they are the conduit with the AFL on football matters (can somebody confirm that)
Other heads. There’ll be other heads below the CEO who manage things like finance, membership, sponsorship, merchandise, people and culture (HR), community engagement. Infrastructure. Each one will have a hierarchy below it. I get the impression that around half the people involved in a footy club don’t have anything directly to do with footy.
Senior Coaches. The poor sod in the hot seat.
Coaching Mentor. I’ve included this layer because I saw a question about what the difference is between Judd’s roll and Walls’ role at Carlton. Put simply, Judd is a direct conduit to the board, a bit like a ladder in ‘snakes and ladders’ who can bypass the CEO to report directly to the board what the footy department are doing. Judd would generally say nothing in meetings except to provide any clarification about board directives, he would generally only observe. By contrast Walls is a shoulder for the Senior Coach to cry on, someone who the senior coach can freely confide in and seek advice from outside of the normal chain of command without any prejudice. Walls probably never attends any club meetings, he just catches up with the senior coach directly. Probably the only contact Walls would probably have with the rest of the club is if he is being remunerated for this work. (FYI Stormzy )
List Manager / High Performance manager / etc. Not sure if this level reports to the Football manager or senior coach? I suspect the former, although it likely differs from club to club.
If anybody wants to have a crack at what the organisational structure is in the list management / recruitment area, I’d be interested. Ditto high performance. Ditto medical. Ditto anything else in the football dept.
All clubs publish a list of their key staff on their website.
In the aftermath of some of the recent upheavals at clubland, there seems to be a bit of confusion about how clubs are run and what the people do. It’s difficult to have any kind of rational debate about whether the President / Board / Footy Director should be sacked if there’s no understanding about what those roles actually are.
I’ll have a crack at what I reckon it is with my very amateur understanding. Feel free to provide your own version. All clubs will be different, and I’m basing my knowledge of what I know about my club (which may have no bearing on reality )
The members:. At the very top of the whole structure are the members. In particular, they are the voting members. Not all members are necessarily voting members - Flossy the Sheep may have her pet membership fully paid up but it doesn’t mean that she has any control over her club what-so-ever. Voting members are typically members who are allowed to attend Annual General Meeting(AGM) (Held annually sometime between October and February) where the board tables the financial auditor reports and reports to the members anything of interest about the running of the club. In theory the AGM is the place where new board members are voted in, but in practice it seems to rarely happen ... but that’s a discussion for another rabbit hole. Sometimes rival tickets are put together to take over the board - the most recent being the “Focus on football” ticket at Richmond around three years ago, but I’ll let the tigers folks speak to what happened with that.
The President / The Chairman. Some clubs call the role President (Eg: Collingwood), other clubs call it the role Chairman (Eg: Swans). I dunno what the difference is, but it’s probably got something to do with the club’s constitution which I’ll get to. The role of the President / Chairman is to be the Chairman at board meetings, and the President/Chairman has the casting vote in the event of a split vote on a board vote (eg: Carlton have 8 board members, if a vote ends up 4 yes, and 4 no; then the vote goes the way of the President’s casting vote). In the case of some clubs the President is the spokesperson for the board (Port Adelaide) but it doesn’t have to be that way (Carlton). The Present / Chairman are one member of the board ...
The board of directors. The board, led by the President, represent the interests of the members (hence why they are technically voted in by members even if that doesn’t really happen in practice). The board are responsible for governance matters, which basically means that they oversee that the organisation is following Australian laws (Corporations law, Taxation law, Employment law, etc, etc), and the laws of the competition (AFL) and the laws of the club (club constitution). Part of that means that they monitor that the organisation does not trade whilst insolvent (ie: organisation does not go broke) They also set the long term strategic direction of the organisation (eg: policy on getting into female sport, or big infrastructure spend would be a board matter), and they are responsible for appointing key office holders (eg: CEO, senior coach, head of football). Part of the strategic direction may include directing organisational culture and values - eg: attitudes towards women, indigenous community, equal opportunity, etc, etc over and above what is required by law. The board (including President / Chairman) are voluntary roles. They typically hold a board meeting once a month, although they can convene emergency board meetings when necessary. One special board meeting is the AGM which is held with the voting members and is described above. Minutes (records) of meetings will be kept in the event that authorities ever need to check that the board has been operating properly. In practice, the board don’t do all this work themselves, they delegate it to others to do and the board oversee it and approve the work. In the case of the club financials, they receive a financial audit report from an external accounting firm (eg: EY, KPMG, PWC, Deloitte’s). The board’s conduit into the organisation is mainly through the CEO, but from time to time they may call for presentations by the head of football or other senior management roles (eg: head of Membership, head of sponsorship). The board hold the CEO to account. The board may also ensure that matters of risk are being identified and addressed by the organisation. An unofficial role of boards is to exercise their rolodexes for the benefit of the organisation (kiddies, google rolodex) for activities like sponsorship and fund raising, although they need to be careful to ensure that they don’t create conflict of interest situations.
The constitution: All clubs have a constitution which specifies their organisation type (not for profit), ownership structure, owners liability, what the purpose of the organisation is, voting procedure, and various curious arcane tidbits of interest. In the case of some clubs (Collingwood) this document is referred to as The articles of association. The_Wookie has links to all these documents if you’re interested in reading your club’s.
The CEO The Chief Executive Officer is the top of the organisation chart within the club. They make sure that the board’s strategic direction is being carried out, that the organisation is functioning effectively: Management are doing their jobs. Bills and wages are getting paid. Maintenance is being performed. Members are being informed. Etc, etc. The CEO doesn’t really do much work themselves - in a perfectly run company where everything is ticking over the CEO sits in their office board with not much to do, but in practice they’d be keeping quite busy. The CEO reports to the board. The CEO is the conduit with the AFL on commercial matters.
The coterie groups These are private groups that exist outside of the club’s organisational structure, typically made up of wealthy / powerful individuals, who fundraise (and potentially lend their Rolodexes) for the benefit of the club. Not sure how they connect through to the club - through the membership dept? I don’t know much about them, but have included here for completeness.
Head of football. The role of the head of football is to ensure that the Senior Coaches (AFL, VFL, AFLW, VFLW, NEAFL, SANFL have all the resources at their disposal to do their job effectively. They also hold the Senior coach to account. I believe they are the conduit with the AFL on football matters (can somebody confirm that)
Other heads. There’ll be other heads below the CEO who manage things like finance, membership, sponsorship, merchandise, people and culture (HR), community engagement. Infrastructure. Each one will have a hierarchy below it. I get the impression that around half the people involved in a footy club don’t have anything directly to do with footy.
Senior Coaches. The poor sod in the hot seat.
Coaching Mentor. I’ve included this layer because I saw a question about what the difference is between Judd’s roll and Walls’ role at Carlton. Put simply, Judd is a direct conduit to the board, a bit like a ladder in ‘snakes and ladders’ who can bypass the CEO to report directly to the board what the footy department are doing. Judd would generally say nothing in meetings except to provide any clarification about board directives, he would generally only observe. By contrast Walls is a shoulder for the Senior Coach to cry on, someone who the senior coach can freely confide in and seek advice from outside of the normal chain of command without any prejudice. Walls probably never attends any club meetings, he just catches up with the senior coach directly. Probably the only contact Walls would probably have with the rest of the club is if he is being remunerated for this work. (FYI Stormzy )
List Manager / High Performance manager / etc. Not sure if this level reports to the Football manager or senior coach? I suspect the former, although it likely differs from club to club.
If anybody wants to have a crack at what the organisational structure is in the list management / recruitment area, I’d be interested. Ditto high performance. Ditto medical. Ditto anything else in the football dept.
All clubs publish a list of their key staff on their website.
Last edited: