Blu3_Boy
Team Captain
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/sport/afl/story/0,26576,25401966-19742,00.html
EXCLUSIVE:
MARK Robinson looks at how the Blues landed Richard Pratt at the helm.
DICK Pratt's ascent to the Carlton presidency began with a plea for $5 million from his great mate John Elliott in Pratt's Little Lonsdale St office in February 2007.
An hour or so later, after discussions between Pratt, Elliott, current Blues president Stephen Kernahan and club great Wes Lofts, Pratt was unofficially Carlton's new president.
Pratt told them: "The problem with you guys is you always want my money, but you don't want my ideas."
Asked what he wanted to do at the club, Pratt said: "I think I'll be president."
In an exclusive interview, Elliott has revealed for the first time how the Blues landed Pratt as president.
It began minutes after former president Graham Smorgon was sensationally booted out by members on February 2, 2007.
After playing a major backroom role in Smorgon's sacking, and after learning of Smorgon's demise, Elliott rang Pratt at his Raheen residence and requested an urgent meeting.
And so the Little Lonsdale St meeting was hatched.
At that meeting, it was decided Pratt, unofficially, was Carlton's new president. Officially, it was announced the following Friday.
To some, the Friday election that ousted Smorgon was Black Friday.
To Elliott, it was the election that saved Carlton.
"I learnt on the Friday night -- an hour before the result was announced -- Smorgon had been thrown out, and I then rang Dick immediately and by pure accident he was at home," Elliott said.
"I told him, 'Mate, we need some money, this place is broke'.
"He said, 'Get your mate Kernahan, and you and Kernahan come to my office at 2.15 Monday'.
"So, I rang Kernahan and Wes came to the meeting, too, because he is a mate of Dick's, and the three of us trotted off to the meeting."
Laughing, Elliott continued: "Kernahan, as we went in, said to me, 'Jack, we've tried all this before with 'Collo' (Ian Collins) and Smorgon and we haven't got much of a response, he hasn't given us any money'."
(Asked if it was fair comment to say the Visy boss did not like Collins or Smorgon, Elliott said: "That's fair.")
Elliott continued: "Make no mistake, we were going in there to get some money, and I opened up the discussions. I said, 'Dick, we need some money, we need about $5 million, it's in real strife, we're going out the back door fast'.
"Dick's response was, 'The problem with you guys is you always want my money, but you don't want my ideas'.
"I said, 'Dick, you can have any job you like, you can be patron, anything you want to do at the club you are welcome to do it, but we need five mill'.
"And he said, 'I think I'll be president'.
"Well, I nearly fell off my chair. So did Kernahan.
"I told him it could be done because I had had the constitution changed when I was president so that when someone died or retired, we could reduce the directors by one or appoint someone else.
"So we talked about everything. He took me out of the conversation and said to Kernahan: 'Look, 'Sticks', go and talk to your mates. You have a board meeting on Wednesday, and if it's unanimous they want me as president, I'll do it'."
A tough, image-conscious businessman, Pratt also warned: "If this leaks out between now and then, I won't do it."
Elliott: "At that stage, Dick didn't know whether they were going to select him. He didn't want to be rejected.
"Anyway, we chatted away, and Dick said, 'Sticks, you've got your marching orders, off you go', and I think we then had a bottle of Grange."
Laughing again, Elliott remembered: "When we got going down the lifts, Sticks said, 'That's amazing, but he didn't tell us how much money he was going to give us'.
"I said, 'Don't worry about it, do you think the club is going to go broke if Dick becomes president?' "
It didn't.
To Elliott, who spoke to the Herald Sun last week, that meeting -- outside his own election to the presidency in 1983, he joked -- was the "most critical to Carlton, ever".
"Dick saved the club," he said. "When I knew Smorgon lost the position, I knew Dick would help, and it changed the atmosphere of the place overnight. He was marvellous. He lifted morale, re-organised the place with good leadership, matched donations dollar for dollar that night at Raheen and he helped get Juddy (Chris Judd)."
Instantly, Pratt wanted the best people.
Elliott gave him three names for chief executive -- Collingwood's Greg Swann, Essendon's Peter Jackson and Geelong's Brian Cook.
"He said, 'John, I can't go to Geelong, I provide Frank Costa with too many boxes' . . . so he got the Collingwood bloke."
Elliott and Pratt first met in 1973, as both were on the verge of becoming two of Australia's highest-profile and wealthy businessmen.
Elliott first saw Pratt when Pratt was captain of the Carlton under-19s a couple of years before that, the year Pratt won the Morrish Medal as the league's best-and-fairest winner.
The pair struck a life-lasting friendship, mainly because of the two Bs -- business and the Blues -- and the depth of friendship was outlined in an article by the Herald Sun's Terry McCrann last week.
The pair became sporting and business giants.
When "Big Jack" became Carlton president in 1983, and before the salary cap and national draft was implemented, he and Pratt combined to make Carlton a powerhouse by buying players from interstate.
"We had plenty of money . . . we got Kernahan, (Craig) Bradley, (Peter) Motley, (Mark) Naley, (Jon) Dorotich, all those blokes, they all came in '86," Elliott said.
"JDE and Dick put all the money in . . . Dick was a great contributor."
How did you pay them?
"I don't know, I've forgotten," Elliott said.
"In those days we used to speak a lot, have lunch a lot, dinner a lot, get out a lot. He was a member of my Woorooma Sports and Recreation Club at the Moulamein Cup."
Elliott recalled awarding Pratt the gold medal one year at Moulamein. The rules were, everyone had a job to do, and Pratt's was to bring the steaks. Pratt and his wife Jeanne flew north, but Pratt soon realised he had forgotten the steaks.
"Dick sent his pilot back to Melbourne, who drove to Raheen to pick up 20 porterhouse steaks, who drove back to the airport from Raheen and flew back to Moulamein . . . they were great days," Elliott said.
Elliott said he was dreading the phone call, someone telling him Dick had died. "I knew he had it, but I didn't know it was as serious as it's turned out to be," Elliott said. "He's too young to go. He's 74.
"I last saw him when Carlton played Richmond at the opening game. He had come out of hospital that day and he didn't look great. I saw him in the rooms and I said to him, 'When the going gets tough, the tough get going' and he said, 'You know I'll be all right'."
Elliott penned a tribute to his mate, which is on his website, jdereport.com.au, and said every time he re-read it he became emotional.
"He was a life-long friend," Elliott said.
"I put this remark in and it's very poignant: 'Dick had a very wide circle of friends (but) I remember him saying to me once, 'At times, John, I don't know whether some of them are real friends or friends just because of my wealth'.
"He used to say that to me quite often, and I said to him I only found out who my friends were when I got into trouble with the NCA."
Elliott visited Pratt at Raheen on Sunday, and spoke to the Herald Sun on condition the article did not appear before Pratt passed. "I don't think it's right," he said.
"I will miss him a lot. We didn't live in each other's pockets, but we were just very good mates," Elliott said.
"He is clearly the greatest Australian I have met."
