Analysis UP THE CHINA RABBIT-HOLE - The TV Docudrama Series (Update)

[Lockhart Road]

SCENE 57-
(Flashback - Canton, now Guangzhou - late September 1980.)

Voice of Narrator:

My first sight, up close, of Communist China, Red China, is a huge mural of Hua Guofeng, Mao’s temporary death-bed-anointed successor, covering a wall in the terminal at White Cloud Airport in Canton - ‘Guangzhou’ since the recent introduction of pinyin. Hua is already out, care-of the political engineering of Zhou Enlai’s protege, Deng Xiaoping.

1997 was a date in the future that hadn’t been talked about with any sort of earnestness until Jock the Sock - Governor Sir Murray MacLehose - went to see Deng in Beijing the year before, in 1979. The last leg of Jock’s return journey to the crown colony came care-of the inauguration of the no-stop-at-border ‘Through’ Train from Guangzhou to the KCR (Kowloon-Canton Railway) terminus with its landmark clock tower (tower is still there but not the rest of the structure) next to the ‘Star’ Ferry pier, TST.

Deng had issued the unprecedented invitation to a British governor to come to China and talk to him for a specific purpose. He wanted to hear ideas on how Hong Kong intended to help the PRC make fast progress with its Open Door Policy. Jock, on the other hand, travelled to the Chinese capital with something quite different, something selfish, on his agenda: to request on behalf of HSBC an extension to the NT Lease. He got, and he felt, the cold shoulder, this despite Deng’s physical handicap, his duck’s disease; Jock the Sock at six feet three towered over China’s diminutive firebrand who could turn iceberg at the drop of the wrong word.

Nevertheless, the ogre of ‘1997’ was, like Frankenstein’s monster, brought to life by greedy, obsessed human hands steered by clumsy human minds. Jock’s usurping of his invitation to Beijing that he’d done nothing to earn was a colonialist imperialistic British act of loud, dumb arrogance.

It made ‘1997’ into a four-digit word ... rather than an item of low-volume, step by step, behind-the-scenes negotation.

As a result the Brits would get what they deserved - out of Hong Kong.

But that inevitability wouldn’t truly manifest itself until 1984, when Five Feet Deng Xiaoping fiercely, frighteningly slapped a non-negotiable deadline on the future. Get those ‘leases’ cancelled, legally, by 30 September - or else.

Now back to 1980. Come late September that year, Deng’s Open Door is the motivator behind my twenty-minute early morning flight from Kai Tak to White Cloud Airport, Guangzhou on a shaky undersized CAAC British-made flying noise machine called a Trident. (CAAC = Civil Aviation Administration of China, AKA ‘China Airlines Always Crash’. Today it is Air China.)





My two travelling companions are Michael Amalfitano - Italian-American, from Boston, president of Youngblood Industries, makers of NASA quality fibreglass printed circuit boards - and John Chan, sales engineer, Arnholds, fluent in putonghua, Cantonese and English. Arnholds have been importing the Youngblood product in bulk for the high-end Hong Kong electronics and OEM consumer appliance manufacturing industry.

Our hosts, Great Wall Enterprises, we will discover that night, are a wholly-owned subsidiary of the People’s Liberation Army.

After making it through the arduous and archaic customs and immigration procedures, we have a few hours to kill looking around Guangzhou before catching our early afternoon flight to Beijing. It is during those few hours that the aforementioned incident takes place.

Setting:

A people’s park with in its centre a rotunda, in which a see foo (Cantonese) an expert, a master, is leading a class of middle-aged people, teaching qi gong - the art of strength, energy, breathing and balance. The see foo is over sixty, is perhaps seventy years of age, perhaps more, it’s impossible to tell.

Mike Amalfitano, John Chan and LR pause their tour of the park, stand about fifty metres away, and watch.

AMALFITANO (suddenly): “I want to do that.”
ROAD: “You what?”
CHAN: “You want to challenge the teacher at qi gong?”
AMALFITANO: “Yeah!”

Mike is a nuggety fellow, about five feet six. For his college he played serious American Football, Gridiron, whatever. A disastrous knee injury, which still has him limping at times, ended his football career and had him concentrating on studies and business. Mike is forty years of age.

As John Chan heads for the rotunda, aiming to put Mike’s request to the see foo, LR is looking in all directions, checking every person in the park, seeking out the Gong An Bu, the Public Security Bureau, the local police, who surely will have been on their tail. Every foreigner in China is being closely monitored as at late September 1980.

LR is privately having a panic attack. He visualises an embarrassing scene in the making, the arrest by the secret police of Mike Amalfitano, whose safety he is responsible for, John Chan and himself. He is not yet aware that they are the guests in China of the PLA, is unaware that the plain-clothes police who surely are not far away, would be adhering to their orders to keep their distance from these special visitors and just watch, record and report.

What the watchers would report, translated, might read something like this:

Dark foreigner is admitted by qi gong master as a temporary student.​

Foreigner takes off his neck tie and jacket, hangs on back of chair, rolls up shirt sleeves. He is rich. Rich tie, rich jacket, very rich Swiss watch, rich shirt, very rich Italian shoes. To be rich is glorious, Supreme Leader Deng has said. Dark foreigner is very glorious.​

Rest of class stand in circle around them as master and foreigner face off, reach out, seize each other by both shoulders, brace legs apart, and push hard as they can into each other, each trying to move the other off balance by using arm and full body strength, direction, timing, endurance and ability, and speed to capitalise on any weakness and manoeuvre opponent off balance. ​

After ten minutes, master and foreigner mutually call contest a draw, and disengage.​

All students applaud as foreigner grasps hand of qi gong master with both his own hands in sign of high respect and honour. ​

This was excellent demonstration of goodwill between China and the West. (See secret photos taken.)​

Supreme Leader Deng’s Open Door Policy is a great success.​

Real winner was our qi gong master who was too diplomatic to be seen to so easily defeat the foreigner (who, our ears detected, is an expert at American Football scrum and ruck, and forty years younger than qi gong master). ​

No action recommended.​

​

AMALFITANO: “That’s a lesson on how you turn your opponent’s thrust to your advantage. If you can pivot and catch him out, that is. I couldn’t. He is very, very good. He countered me every time. Very, very fit. What lovely people. Thanks for that, John. That was worth the trip by itself.”
ROAD (glancing at the see foo resting in a whicker arm chair being fanned by his students): “I think he was going easy on you, Mike.”
CHAN: “He’s only sweating to give you face, Mike.”
AMALFITANO (laughing): “Let’s go get our plane. I just hope it won’t be another Limey little piece of shyte Trident.”

On the plane - a Boeing 707 to Mike’s relief - he discusses his tactics with LR.

AMALFITANO: “The secret to it is to try to add your adversary’s momentum to your own. Catch him by surprise and get him off balance.”
ROAD: “Take advantage of your adversary?”
AMALFITANO: “Well put. Take advantage, in fact, of adversity. It applies to a lot of different situations. I apply it in business as much as I can get away with it.”
ROAD: “Take advantage of adversity. I’ll remember that. You’re not Chinese by any chance?”
AMALFITANO: “Pure Italian. All the way back to Marco Polo.”

At this point two cabin crew appear, pushing a trolley with an urn and porcelain mugs printed with the CAAC emblem.
STEWARDESS: “Tea or coffee?”
ROAD: “Coffee, please.”
STEWARDESS: “Sorry, no coffee.”
ROAD: “Okay. Tea, please.”
STEWARDESS: “Milk and sugar?”
ROAD: “Both, please.”
STEWARDESS: “Both milk and sugar?”
ROAD: “Yes, please.”
STEWARDESS: “Sorry, no milk.”
ROAD: “Okay. Just sugar.”
AMALFITANO: “Obviously a rehearsed routine.”
ROAD: “Very rehearsed. Welcome, world, the door to China is open.”


Voice of Narrator:

Though the qi gong lesson in the Guangzhou people’s park, considering its future application, is of main relevance to this docudrama, I have to add a paragraph or two about what happened in Beijing, to put it all in context.

The three of us check in to two rooms in the old red-brick Peking Hotel, with miniature balconies overlooking the Avenue of Everylasting Peace. John and I share. The first five-storey wing of the hotel was completed in 1915 as the Grand Hotel de Pekin, the most recent wing in 1954.





Our first encounter with our hosts, Great Wall Enterprises, is at dinner in a private room off the hotel lobby, ground floor. It is my introduction to Kweichow brand mou tai, brewed from sorghum. In no time I’m washing it down with beer, the taste of which is rendered into water.

Then our real host arrives and is shown to the chair at the head of the table.

He is in the uniform of a PLA general.

He is as big as the PLA itself. He is a replica of Mao. A dead ringer.

Mao is dead, has been for four years, supposedly.

Next morning we’re driven in a mini bus north to the Great Wall at Badaling - the well-worn, largely untouched-up section of the Great Wall at Badaling. There are very few people around. The quiet, the absolute quiet ... it is all-encompassing ... on this sort of quiet history transports itself, rising up like a tangible mist out of deep valleys on either side of the Wall, its rocks powerful, its slopes flush with flowers of violent purple.

This section of Wall dates to the Ming Dynasty, early 1500s. It is where, 35 years later, the SAASTA lads on tour would perform their haka.

We climb to the farthest watchtower, the one on the horizon far away. The steps are huge and high. Massive blocks of stone cracked and grooved with the centuries that have passed since they were manhandled into place.

Mike Amalfitano does not hesitate. He climbs with us. He does not say one word about the pain from his busted knee that is killing him. We make it to the farthest watchtower, step to its highest stone, take in the 360-degree panorama. It’s an experience never to be forgotten, and it never has been.





Communication -

I still see Mike making a long-distance call to his company in Boston on an old Bakelite phone in an old phone booth off the old Peking Hotel lobby: “Yes, Peking. I’m calling from Peking ... yes Peking, China!” Doubtless the Ministry of State Security, PLA Intelligence and the Gong An Bu are listening in. I stand not far away, in earshot, a laugh on my face, watching, enjoying. I’d liked Mike on sight; three days together in the Middle Kingdom before it changes forever, never to be the same China, is making us pals for life. I still think about him often. I’m thinking about him now.

A truly great, fearless, live life to the fullest sort of guy, who showed me how to take the initiative minus hesitation - who advised me to look adversity in its ugly eye ... and use it against itself.


SCENE 58-

(Flash forward to Tuesday in May before the 2018 AFL match in Shanghai.)


Setting:

Pro Drinkers Corner, Happy Valley, Hong Kong.

ROAD: “Communication. The lost art thereof. I can remember when you had to book international calls forty-eight hours plus in advance. I can remember, too, when there were only two phone lines connecting the Dong Fang in Guangzhou with Hong Kong. I stayed there overnight returning from Beijing in 1980. In those days there was an excuse for a communication delay. There has never been an excuse for non-communication.”
ROBBINS: “Still nothing I take it?”
ROAD: “Not a dicky bird. You know what I say about that.”
ROBBINS: “If you hear nothing ... “
ROAD (in Red Adair mode): “ ... nothing’s effing-well happening. Hear that?”
ROBBINS: “Loud and clear. What’re you drinking?”
ROAD (depressed): “The sound of nothing is nothing to celebrate.”

Theme ‘music’:

WARNING: DO NOT LISTEN TO THIS BY ACCIDENT!

This is what LR has in his head every waking moment of his life these days - at times it is softer; at times it is like this, minus a volume control: very loud; other times, most times, it is in between.
He doesn’t recommend it. What he does ask is for those who are lucky, without realising it, not to suffer from tinnitus, certainly this degree of bilateral tinnitus, to please try to feel for those who do. Except LR. Don’t worry about LR. Sure as hell, he doesn’t.

(Apologies for the typos beyond LR’s control in the youtube video warning.)






Voice of Narrator:

What this suggests is that I have a Chinese dragon inside my skull. As I’ve mentioned, colloquial myth has a dragon asleep inside every mountain. I have one that woke up, exited its mountain, got lost, reduced itself to the size of a speck of dust, flew up my nose, curled up inside my middle ear, and stuck fat. As I’ve aged, my dragon’s bedchamber has aged in parallel, and the quality of my dragon’s slumber has suffered. It, my resident dragon, has been gradually awakening.

NB: Chinese dragons do not age. They are immortal.

But I’m not. I am less immortal every day. And now, as at mid May 2018, my Chinese dragon is wide awake, inside my head, wondering what to do next.

ROBBINS: “What happens now?”
ROAD: “What are the issues?”
ROBBINS: “Make a list. Not necessarily in order of priority.”
ROAD: “No China director on the Club board. Not one.”
ROBBINS: “Check.”
ROAD: “Still no China Committee set up at Alberton.”
ROBBINS: “Check.”
ROAD: “Nobody full time on the ground, in China or here.”
ROBBINS: “Check.”
ROAD: “That’s three. There are four blunders.”
ROBBINS: “No executive in full and permanent charge of commercial activity ... of commercial success in China.”
ROAD: “Yes. Not this ‘China engagement’ stuff, vital as it is to set the scene. It’s only half the strategy. Less than half. All we get is fly-in, fly-out. It’s never been the right way to make proper consistent progress in China. I’ve known that ever since my first visit to China in 1980. But what do we know? We’ve been up here for three-quarters of a century between the two of us. Not long enough, or so it seems. Daryl Ander is right. He’s spot on. PAFC are proving they’re not actually sincere re China. The big sponsors can see it, can feel it, and that’s why they’re giving Port Adelaide a wide berth. It’s so bloody ... frustrating!”
ROBBINS: “Settle down, Red.”
ROAD: “Go rock yourself in the treetops.”
ROBBINS: “We have to get Daryl on the PAFC Board.”
ROAD: “Just for starters.”
ROBBINS: “How do we get it done?”

LR looks at him. He doesn’t have the answer. Not yet.


SCENE 59 - One week later plus an hour.

Robin has gone home. Night has fallen. LR is alone with his thoughts.

Voice of Narrator:

The second match at Jiangwan Stadium has been played and won. Not a word has reached the Hong Kong-based China advisors of PAFC re State Net. Not a peep, not a participle, not a punctuation mark.

Silence reigns ... except for my tinnitus, which you’ve now had a taste of. In the audio no-contest called Alberton dead air it’s more severe and more bilateral than ever ... worse than compulsorily wearing earphones emitting the whine of a non-stop Dwayne Russell match commentary.

Okay ... maybe not as torturous as that.

I take up my next Heineken. Something prompts my mind to rewind, back to Mike Amalfitano’s lesson at that people’s park in Canton, late September 1980, thirty-seven point five years before: Take advantage of adversity.

Take Advantage of Adversity.

I’m still pondering this when my beer ends and the next one arrives. By the time that beer is down and its successor is in my fist, I know what I must do. The alcohol has unlocked the strategy chamber in this brain of mine. My personal dragon, inside my head, maybe had something to do with it.

This must be done by me on my own. It has to be seen that way, to protect Robin. Because this must, to give it any chance of coming off, be done by starting quietly, then building up to a crescendo, which means potentially uncomfortable noise ... something I’m well versed in.

I hunker down to think more deeply. Someone turns the hi-fi up loud. It suits my mood. Drowns the tinnitus. Enhances the deep think, the strategy think.


Theme music:

‘I Think I’ll Just Stay Here And Drink’ (Merle Haggard)

 

[Janus]

It sounds suspiciously like the board of PAFC thought they had invested enough time, money and manpower to expect commercial returns but not enough time, money and manpower to actually deliver those returns in reality.

Champagne tastes on beer money. And then they wonder why no one is falling over themselves to join them when those people could probably do just as good a job by themselves...probably better if they got the right advice.

I guess the real question is how much they actually believe in the China strategy. The more they invest in it to get it right, even when it seems counterintuitive, the more it will pay off in the long run.

 

[Lockhart Road]

Episode 7 continued.



SCENE 60 - Wednesday morning, 25 July 2018

Setting:

Executive lounge, Island Shangri-La Hotel, Pacific Place, Queensway (linking Central and Wanchai) Hong Kong Island.


(

Present:
Xiao Junxi and Zhen Pugu of China State Net International, and Lockhart Road.


LR is wearing pointed-toe tan Hush Puppies, dark stretch Calvin Kleins and middling blue checked jacket with polished 2018 Power membership badge in the lapel. He’d thought about wearing his black drover’s hat, as the weather is sunny and the sun is July hot, but decided it might come across as overkill.

Camera views from various angles, views of Victoria Harbour out the floor-to-ceiling window, of Wanchai North and East Point, of Tsimshatsui, Kowloon and the Nine Dragons, of the stalagmite jungle of concrete, steel, glass and curtain-wall that leaches and stretches in every direction far as the eye can see. 99.9% of it had not been there when LR first set foot in Hong Kong in May 1969 on his R&R leave from South Vietnam ... half a century ago.

Voice of Narrator:

I’d made up my mind to go it alone, to go it quietly to start with. And I have. So far it’s paying off.

Recalling that Mr. Xiao told me at the gala dinner in Shanghai in May 2017 that he would be in Hong Kong in July for a regular Hongkong Electric (of which China State Net own twenty per cent) board meeting, I applied the logic he would be in Hong Kong in July 2018 again for a board meeting.

I sent an enquiry via Ms. Fu Mingfeng inviting Mr. Xiao for a coffee if / when he was in Hong Kong this time - my objective being ‘to renew the friendship we began in Shanghai a year earlier’. She responded a week later to advise that Mr. Xiao was available to meet me for a ‘short chat’.

There is no such thing as a ‘short chat’ in China. This one in the executive lounge of the Island Shangri-La has been going on for two hours. It is now 12:40. Xiao, accompanied by Zhen Pugu, have a lunch meeting with Rong Qi (now positioned in Hong Kong running an operation established in 2016 and called China State Net Overseas Investments) and the senior staff of their local office in Wanchai North. But they show no sign of easing up on short-chatting with me, no sign of going to it.

We’ve talked about everything I can think of to talk about, then some.

The objective for me is continuity, plus a basis on which to achieve it.

I know that Mr. Xiao is extremely embarrassed by events that forced him to break his commitment to a meeting with PAFC at the second AFL match in Shanghai in mid May, to break his commitment to put State Net’s funding of the Alberton Oval Precinct Redevelopment in writing and co-sign it ... and so I’ve kept well clear of any direct reference to that. Instead I have talked around it, having decided on a strategy to reveal to Mr. Xiao and Mr. Zhen why I am convinced State Net is in need of a partnership with Port Adelaide Football Club ... why the scope of, especially the profitability of, their future existence in the Australian power industry depends on a mutually beneficial community and commercial partnership with Port Adelaide Football Club.

I have talked around the elephant in the executive lounge so far, so long, that my head has met up with my own tail. Time for the punch line.

ROAD: “Communications.”
ZHEN: “Yes?”
ROAD: “You are in need of a communications partner ... an unobtrusive and thus not mistrusted communications partner ... to inform the Australian public that you have a heart, that you’re human, that you love being in Australia, not for reasons of cold hard takeaway cash, but because you are very proud to be Chinese and you are inspired by the opportunity to show Australians who you really are ... and in the process establish a bond with Australians. A bond that reaches back into history ... back to when Chinese and Australians fought the Japanese together ... to when the Chinese people - like Australian gold miners in Ballarat, with their Chinese colleagues at the Eureka Stockade - revolted and created their own republic ... to 1972 when the Australian prime minister, a big bloke called Gough Whitlam, came to Beijing on behalf of his new government, to recognise the People’s Republic - ”
ZHEN: “But Mr. Lockhart we already do a lot of community work, finance a lot of community and aboriginal projects, schools, welfare funds ... in Australia.”
ROAD: “Yes, you do. But the average Australian knows nothing about it.”
XIAO (via Zhen): “So this is the situation where we need the communications partner like you have specified to us. An unobtrusive communications partner - such as a football club in the national league ... such as Port Adelaide.”
ROAD: “The Power.”
XIAO (via Zhen): “The People’s Power.”

Notes:

Xiao tells LR that he would be happy to organise for him to meet with Rong Qi, now that Rong permanently operates out of Hong Kong, so that they can carry on this exchange of ideas together. This is the continuity LR was looking for.

Rong Qi, you see, is still one of the State Net directors of Electricity Grid of SA.

Here LR pauses ... to re-examine exactly what he is doing.

Could he be accused, with cause, of angling for PAFC to become an agent for Beijing’s influence peddling in Australia?

He could. Some media nasties would gleefully fashion such an accusation.

But it would not be accurate, he knows. And he could fashion his own defence in verbiage that made the inaccuracy crystal clear, at worse blunted it, turned the accusation on the accusers.

No, LR confirms to himself, he’s playing the fair dinkum line for the benefit of his Club. Australians appreciate up-front honesty, even if it’s not exactly what they want to hear from time to time. If it’s honest, if it’s accurate, if the messenger is truly one of them ... they grow comfortable enough with it ... in particular when the message infers congratulation to and praise for Australians for their culture - especially their sporting culture.

ROAD: “Yes, Mr. Xiao. Yes, Mr. Zhen. This is the precise situation.”

Voice of Narrator:

At this point I visualise Mike Amalfitano, pressing his nuggety frame hard and strong and unyieldingly via the palms of his hands upon the shoulders of a seventy-plus qi gong master in a rotunda in a park in Guangzhou, late September 1980.

At this point I know that I have taken advantage of adversity ... that I have seized the challenge of the political freeze between Beijing and Canberra ... and that I am on the threshold of snatching back initiative, out of the lazy jaws of capitulation.


SCENE 61- Thursday morning, 6 September 2018.

Setting:

Conference room in office of China State Net Overseas Investments, 13th floor of a high-rise commercial building in Wanchai North. The Chinese do not look upon ‘13’ as an unlucky number.

LR has brought Ugo Alsthom and Primrose Yao to meet, again, Mr. Rong Qi. They had first met in Melbourne in May 2015, when everything and everyone were in their infancy, so to speak.

State Net Overseas Investments, established two years earlier, has issued to the market, approved by the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission, convertible notes, face value ten billion US dollars. Only twenty per cent of this paper has thus far been allocated. Eighty per cent is being held in reserve.

During their forty-minute discussion, Rong reveals the source of the setback to State Net’s funding of the Alberton Oval Precinct Redevelopment is Zhang Ai, alias the Roadblock. Rong politely describes him as ‘old-fashioned’.

Subsequent to the meeting, at LR’s suggestion the three go downstairs to the podium floor for a Starbucks coffee and a quick review. He wants to hear what Primrose has to say about what Rong had said, what Rong may actually have meant, what Rong’s body language really communicated, and about Rong the man himself. Ugo had been too wrapped up in being seen to lead the team on to the next meeting - an FCC lunch with AustCham HK - he forgot Primrose was on the team, forgot her vital and first-class contribution.

After the review, Ugo and Primrose leave. LR stays in Starbucks, thinking. He has said he will meet up with them at 12:30 in the FCC. Robin will join in. LR sits ... and sits ... and sits. He seems to be shaking his head at everyone in the place, but he’s actually only shaking his head to himself.

Eventually he sends Robin a text telling him that he, Robin, is on his own. LR is not going to the FCC after all. He’s going to walk home, take a nap, and try to stop shaking his head.

Then he’s going down to Pro Drinkers Corner for lunch, and an afternoon of more thinking ... more deciding what to do next.

China State Net, ‘too big to fail’, is far too big for small-minded postcode 5014 / 5015. Zhang Ai, the Roadblock, has to be countered. The person to contact for critical advice on LR’s theory how to effect the counter is Daryl Ander.


SCENE 62-

Voice of Narrator:

We’re planning for the third match at Jiangwan Stadium, in 2019, this time versus the Saints. The Suns did a great job, of proving to the universe, and finally to themselves, that they’re irreparable no-hopers at this caper. The Saints will be better, can’t be worse.

It behoves PAFC to be seen to be helping the Saints make a commercial success of their three-year Shanghai agreement, to stop acting superior and stop treating our opposition like schoolyard targets for derision led by our chief bully, Chairman Moi. If the Saints are seen to pull off a coup or two with a sponsor or two because of co-operation from PAFC, that will work to ensure they hang around for the long term, and/or it will ensure that another AFL club or two are given sound reason to make their interest known and thereby boost the market value of the Shanghai weekend.

It will make AFL House look good, feel good about their own investment in China which, thus far, includes permanent jobs for four, soon six, personnel - next step being an AFL office in Shanghai, part of AustCham Shanghai, but with or without PAFC, whose status as the original China frontiersmen is being allowed to wither from Marco Polo ....





.... to Burke & Wills.


.


Here’s how.

One of three candidates for Joint Major Sponsor who were in contention at Alberton just before Xmas 2017 were Mitsubishi (as a direct replacement for Renault), a California-based new brand on the international eCommerce scene called ‘Wish’ and, of course, Sally Zou and AusGold (nuff said about Sally). ‘Wish’ was a beauty, fitted snugly with our strategy for China where they already had 600,000 subscriber-vendors. ‘Wish’ approached the Club via their agent in Sydney, who spoke directly to Thorold Keene and told him he knew all about Port Adelaide as he’d grown up in Taperoo.

Keene took this golden opportunity solely upon himself, as he’s wont to do, as he had by end 2017 no confidence in the commercial executives whose salaries he was paying. He hugged ‘Wish’ to his chest, as he did State Net, told no-one anything that was or wasn’t happening, enlisted zero support from those around him, delegated zero involvement and as a consequence only Thorold Keene knew when the precise moment arrived, or why, when ‘Wish’ slipped through his lonely fingers.





But ‘Wish’ is not the particular example I have in mind relative to commercial prospecting coming up short in the lead-up to Jiangwan Stadium III.

The example is Mitsubishi. We have had, I was told, a great connection with Mitsubishi. Solid as a rock, based on one ingrained item of procedure. The Club’s commercial partnership executive shouts his Mitsubishi contact a lunch once a month. Rock lobster, that’s my guess. And what do we have to show for it? Minor sponsorship of our SANFL presence. What did we get to show for it come Xmas 2017 out of our quest to graduate Mitsubishi to a JMS? We were shown the door. Mitsubishi decided PAFC couldn’t satisfy their demands for marketing exposure in the Eastern states. We’d had this exact same challenge from Renault in 2012 / 2013, and had conquered it.

There went out the window a perfect chance to be seen to be cooperating with the Saints for the mutual benefit of all parties: the Saints, the AFL, the Shanghai initiative, Mitsubishi and ... us.

Yes indeed: us. Do a deal with the Saints. Bring their guy along to the rock lobster lunch, partner up with them, get them to partner with us. The Saints take the eastern states, we take the Central corridor. The Saints get half of something instead of 100 per cent of nothing ... and, guess what, so do we. We come out smelling like roses ... being seen to seize and capitalise on a less than obvious opportunity, being seen to have maximised our return on it ... and the Saints’ too.

Can’t do that, I hear you say, Richard. Why not? Why not cooperate with a rival club on a commercial partnership when you’re already in a parnership of sorts with them in Shanghai? Why not? Take your pick: 1) It’s never been done before; 2) It’s too complicated; 3) You can’t do something for a rival club; 4) Who trusts a rival club? 5) This is my turf, it wasn’t my idea and I’m therefore not interested; 6) It’s time for lunch.


Theme music:

‘Why Don’t They Understand?’ (George Hamilton IV)

 

[Lockhart Road]

SCENE 63 -

Notes:

Road sits alone.

He’s concentrating more than thinking. He’s frowning some more. The hi-fi in Pro Drinkers Corner takes over the theme music. The George Hamilton IV ballad from 1958 is on LR’s personal Spotify playlist. He takes out his Nokia, looks at it, puts it on the table, picks it up, looks at it, puts it back on the table. It has no answers for him, his vintage Nokia ... just a memory bursting with unfortunate texts, a memory stained with unfortunate memories.

He suffers PTSD flashbacks to thus far unreported Red Adair outbreaks. There was the Tom Jonas issue in June 2016; Tom was serving a six-week suspension for something stupid on-field and so the Club sent him up with the promo team for Gui’s gala luncheon in Shanghai. Road asked Rick Mattinson to confirm that this was true, that Jonas was really coming. Road wanted to know if the senior coach had approved it. Rick asked: “What’s wrong? People in China don’t know Tom’s been suspended do they?”

That wasn’t the point, so far as LR was concerned. Instead of working his guts out in atonement through his penalty period, Jonas was rewarded with a junket to China. What did the other players think of that? What message did it send to them? Those were the questions that had instantly flown into LR’s head. Those were the questions that would’ve flown into Big Bob McLean’s head. According to Big Bob’s code of conduct, Tom Jonas, co-captain nowadays, would’ve been locked in the gym with iron and treadmills for silent judgemental company, not given Cathay Pacific air stewardesses to chat up and ask: “How good is this?”

On his return to Alberton, having sat in airliners and airports for a couple of days, Tom Jonas promptly pulled a hamstring, never played again that season.

Then there was June 2017, the SCAFL finals round in Hong Kong.

The opening round in January was in Guangzhou, attended by Rick Mattinson who was told a new China team - the first to be introduced to the league since PAFC started its sponsorship in 2014-2015 - was ready to play an exhibition match during finals round in Hong Kong in June, in preparation for admission to SCAFL for season 2017-2018.

Rick, in January, had then come to Hong Kong where Road and Robbins had readied for him a forty-eight hour itinerary - seven diverse appointments that included eCommerce and social media actives (subjects on LR’s mind being international POWER merchandise marketing and sales, and international PAFC membership marketing and sales), also an interview with Sam Agars at HKFC, published in the South China Morning Post - first of a series of articles under Sam’s byline leading up to and during Jiangwan Stadium I (see links below).

Result from the forty-eight hour itinerary and the seven appointments: nothing, zilch, zada, zero follow-up from Alberton on any of the seven opportunities. Make that seven minus one.

The Sam Agars article was followed up on from Hong Kong, not Alberton.


https://www.scmp.com/sport/other-sp...d-nba-punch-port-adelaide-bring-real-afl-deal


https://www.scmp.com/sport/other-sp...-game-only-beginning-afls-port-adelaide-leave


https://www.scmp.com/sport/other-sp...-aussie-rules-china-stay-how-do-port-adelaide


Whilst in Guangzhou for the opening round back in January, Rick had asked SCAFL to consider a moniker for the new Chinese team that contained a Port Adelaide connotation. On return to Alberton, he quit his China responsibilities apart from taking the lead on the annual Shanghai event. Consequently, the Club took their eye off South China. They deny that to this day.

As a consequence, the new China team, instead of being christened Huizhou Power (remember Pearl River Power from 2015?) or similar, ran onto the pitch for the exhibition match in June 2017 wearing brown and gold and responding to calls of “Huizhou Hawks!” Yes, you heard right, the Hawks.

Rick again had no idea what Road was so upset about. “We can’t,” he said, “be seen to be the bully up there.” ‘Oh yes we can’, LR thought, ‘we’re paying for it, but we’re not keeping a professional eye on where our money is going, or even appearing to care where it’s going; if we did keep an eye on it, and care, I would call that due diligence, protecting PAFC’s interests, not bullying.’

Huizhou Hawks have proved to be a distinct fail. They turn up to games looking like dogs’ breakfasts. Their name has already changed, but still not to anything indicating PAFC or Power.

By not sitting still, by not letting each of these issues fly by unchallenged, they became nails in Road’s coffin ... waiting to be hammered in.

More nails, twenty thousand of them, are the A$20,000 that the Club pays to SCAFL each year as a competition sponsorship fee - something Road initiated (and Rick Mattinson reluctantly endorsed) for the 2014-15 season at a SCAFL Committee meeting held in Coyote, Wanchai. Payment of the fee has become an annual ‘expense’, as routine as the scarcity of interest shown by the Club in achieving any sort of return on what is in fact an ‘investment’.


Theme music:

‘I Just Don’t Understand’ (Ann-Margret)




Voice of Narrator:

Fear of volunteers. Every football club of any size and ambition is the same. Every football club of size and ambition fears their volunteers. At least, the executives whose salaries are paid by the football club do. Unstable these executives are ... unstable enough to visualise the volunteers showing them up, and taking over their jobs ... for free.

On his first day as Chairman, Karl Krupp had declared: “It is amazing the number of born-and-bred Port Adelaide business people that have moved on to great success nationally and internationally who want to help.''

He was talking about volunteers. At no time did he append any warning to those volunteers that they would be received with suspicion and - as per the vernacular - given nothing, taken nowhere and treated like a dog.

I was lucky. I was given a bottle of vintage wine, taken via a business-class upgrade to Melbourne for two days’ work, and not treated like a dog. I was, however, treated with suspicion right from the start.

The Kaiser didn’t add a warning or a proviso or anything else because he didn’t know what he was doing, didn’t know what he was talking about, and sure as shooting did not know what he was getting himself into. He’s about to find out.

The time has come to teach the chairman a thing or two. Time has come to tell the Kaiser what a catastrophe in reality, as against colossus in his own eyes, he has been and still is.

Time has come to confront Karl Krupp once and for all.

ROAD: “There is one seat still vacant on the board. If Krupp fills it with anyone other than a China expert ... anyone other than Daryl Ander or equal ... I will go into attack dog mode.”
ROBBINS: “You’re going to get yourself fired.”
ROAD: “I doubt anyone takes enough notice of me to do something like that.”
ROBBINS: “I wouldn’t count on it.”
ROAD: “I’ll take dismissal as a compliment.”







SCENE 64-

The last straw ... from a haystack of last straws.

LR phones Daryl Ander, discusses with him the strategy of bringing in Electricity Grid of SA as the vehicle for China State Net to transfer its pledged funding of the Alberton Oval Precinct Redevelopment - simply by withholding a portion of State Net’s share of EGSA’s annual profit and using that, instead of repatriating all profit to Beijing and suffering the associated fees and forex devaluation.

This results in contact between Daryl Ander and Oliver Sutton, the EGSA CEO whom Ander knows via association as CEO of Ten-66 Funds Management. It’s from Oliver Sutton - whose nickname is Subito, derived from ‘Alluva Sudden’ - that Ander learns Xiao Junxi will be in Adelaide next week for a board meeting.

Road wants Ander to resume his connection with Xiao in Adelaide.

But in readiness for that, Road wants Ander to meet the new Premier of SA, to garner his support for PAFC’s State Net initiative and thereby the Alberton Oval Precinct Redevelopment as a whole.

Road wants Ander to be invited by PAFC to the public announcement that the SA Government will sponsor Jiangwan Stadium III - as it did Jiangwan Stadium I and II when Labor was in power. Road wants the Club to seize on this opportunity to introduce Daryl Ander to the new Premier of SA, so that he, Daryl Ander, has an open door not only to the Premier’s office, also to position Electricity Grid of SA, via his contacts with them, as funding facilitator in place of Zhangan Jinan Development and Mr. Zhang Ai, the Roadblock.

ALSTHOM: “We’ll get Daryl involved ... in due course.”

In due course?

In. Due. Course.

In due course?

BOOM.

Welcome back, Red Adair. Write up a few emails for me, will you, please, pal ... starting with: Never ever write ‘in due course’ in any communication.

It’s a weasel phrase implying: “asterisk asterisk asterisk asterisk hyphen asterisk asterisk asterisk.”

Ugo Alsthom calls Robin Robbins to complain about Lockhart Road’s frequency of emails ... every email copied to everyone ... ordering everyone about.

ALSTHOM: “Can’t you get him to stop?”
ROBBINS: “No.”

Ugo hangs up in fury.

Things are imploding fast.

Voice of narrator:

There are two classes of Chinese dragons: the ordinary dragon which has four claws on each paw, and the imperial dragon with an extra claw, with five claws. An imperial dragon can do extra tricks. I reckon the one inside my head is an imperial dragon.

The Chinese dragon is from the same family as the phoenix, the griffen, the chimera - made up of different parts. The dragon has the head of a horse, the antlers of a reindeer, the mane of a lion, the forked tongue and body of a snake, the scales of a fish, the powerful legs of a tiger, and the needle-sharp talons of an eagle. No wonder it can do everything, except breathe fire. It can, on the contrary, incidentally, breathe water.

Now ... what about me? I’m made up of different parts, too. I’m part world-beater and part flop. I’m part problem-solver and part problem. I’m part ex-soldier, part ex-salesman, part ex-sportsman on turf and part ex-surfer on water. I’m part manager, part mentor, part poker player, part maverick. I’m part dad, part granddad, part husband and part Port Adelaide tragic.

I’m part volunteer and part free-of-charge professional.

Does that make me a Chinese dragon?

Or does it just mean I’ve lived a life.

Does it mean the Chinese dragon inside my skull, my resident mascot, has taken over this life of mine and is now making sure it’s still being lived?

Let’s see about that.


FINAL SCENE:

Alberton Oval Board Room, Friday, 7 December 2018.





Keene slides iPad across to Krupp with screen showing Road’s latest offending post on BigFooty (logo prominent). The thread title under which he has posted, a thread he created, reads: ‘Cause of Death of the 2018 Joint Major Sponsor’.

KEENE: “This time he has finally gone too far?”
KRUPP: “He went too far with me a long time ago.”
KEENE: “What’s to be done?”
KRUPP: “Tell him he’s fired.”
KEENE: “You hired him. In Hong Kong in mid May 2014, officially, with the whole board there and approving his role. You hired him, you fire him.”
KRUPP: “It’s my job to move things forward. I hire ... I don’t fire. It’s your job to clean up after me. You fire him.”
KEENE: “Er, I think that’s ... ”
KRUPP (inclines head towards the one vacant chair at the PAFC board table): “Darren Cahill has just confirmed to me that he’s making himself available to us for twelve months. I’ve asked him to sit right there.”
KRUPP (thinks): ‘All the li’l ole blue-collar club from Alberton true believers will love me for it.’

He turns to Keene, as if he’s just realised he’s there.

KRUPP: “The li’l ole blue-collar club from Alberton true believers will love us for it ... Thorold. Me ... and you, too. Thorold. Chick!? Where’s my briefcase?”

Keene opens his mouth ... no sound comes out. He knows not what to say. He knows not what to think. He only knows, suddenly, that he would do himself an immense favour by ‘retiring’ as CEO of the Port Adelaide Football Club ... and wangling a ‘retirement’ switch to Power Community Ltd., perhaps as CEO.

Thorold Keene’s passion for community, culture and casualness rises up in his throat, fills his chest, sends his heartbeat soaring with reborn purpose.

He smiles ... really smiles ... for the first time in as long as he can remember. He feels the smile take possession of his soul.

Thorold Keene, alias Common Touch Keene, has rediscovered that he is, first and foremost, a bloody good bloke.

Now it was time to get out of here.






SCENE 65 -

The camera fades towards black.

Just before it gets there, camera pivots to zoom in on a spot on the wall behind Krupp’s head. The spot appears to be a fly.

No, it’s not a fly.

It’s a tick ... a black bloodthirsty tick ... the sort of insect that takes pleasure at setting up camp under the Kaiser’s toilet seat.

A couple of hours ago, it may have been an imperial Chinese dragon.




Next:

Episode 8 - Epilogue

GREAT HALL OF THE PORT PEOPLE -

Some time in the future.

• 200 tables, 2,000 diners, a thousand staff in the Great Hall of the People.
• Red banners, black white silver teal banners, AFL shields ... everywhere.
• New faces, new profiles everywhere ... a new world of Australian Football.
• King K, feeling emasculated, is missing out on yet another picnic.
• An imperial Chinese dragon, alias Darren Cahill.
• Bang a gong - Bring back the Bars.

—————————————

 

[RussellEbertHandball]

SCENE 64- The last straw ... from a haystack of last straws.
.....
This results in contact between Daryl Ander and Oliver Sutton, the EGSA CEO whom Ander knows via association as CEO of Ten-66 Funds Management. It’s from Oliver Sutton - whose nickname is Subito, derived from ‘Alluva Sudden’ - that Ander learns Xiao Junxi will be in Adelaide next week for a board meeting.....

I did LOL at this. Very clever who ever came up with the nickname.

Should Daryl Ander be on the board, or CEO? We badly need a commercial guy driving things.

 

[manureid]

I imagine this thread is likewise getting high viewership in the boardroom at Alberton.

 

[RussellEbertHandball]

I imagine this thread is likewise getting high viewership in the boardroom at Alberton.

Sitting in on a discussion of this thread in the boardroom would be interesting.

 

[S.Patrol.G]

I imagine this thread is likewise getting high viewership in the boardroom at Alberton.

You could well be right. In that case, allow me to address the Board (members don't get that opportunity, beyond a survey, anymore)

1. David, stop calling us "the little club from Alberton". We are the most successful football club in Australia. Remember it and remind people of it.
2. Holly, what do you actually do?
3. Amanda, you are an apologist and satisfied with mediocrity. Like Holly, what do you do?
4. Cos, you have a conflict of interest to resolve. You are either acting in the best interests of PAFC or Eddie. It can't be both. Choose one and if it's not PAFC, leave immediately.
5. Darren, you are arguably the best tennis coach in the world with a sporting pedigree more elite than most. You know what it takes to be the best. Demand it.
6. We, the members, want the Prison Bars without any limitations or concessions. Make it happen. No excuses, just get it done.
7. To all of you: You approved two of the worst decisions in the history of the club, co-captains and Hinkley's 3 year extension. You should all be ashamed. You are not worthy of a position on the Board of PAFC. Get out the way and let better people make the decisions.

 

[Lockhart Road]

You could well be right. In that case, allow me to address the Board (members don't get that opportunity, beyond a survey, anymore)

1. David, stop calling us "the little club form Alberton". We are the most successful football club in Australia. Remember it and remind people of it.
2. Holly, what do you actually do?
3. Amanda, you are an apologist and satisfied with mediocrity. Like Holly, what do you do?
4. Cos, you have a conflict of interest to resolve. You are either acting in the best interests of PAFC or Eddie. It can't be both. Choose one and if it's not PAFC, leave immediately.
5. Darren, you are arguably the best tennis coach in the world with a sporting pedigree more elite than most. You know what it takes to be the best. Demand it.
6. We, the members, want the Prison Bars without any limitations or concessions. Make it happen. No excuses, just get it done.
7. To all of you: You approved two of the worst decisions in the history of the club, co-captains and Hinkley's 3 year extension. You should all be ashamed. You are not worthy of a position on the Board of PAFC. Get out the way and let better people make the decisions.

You, mate, are also an imperial Chinese dragon methinks.

LR, whoever he is, could not have written it better, more succinctly, more all-encompassing, himself.

 

[Macca19]

Would love to know more about a certain potential sponsor that was mentioned and why it fell through.

 

[S.Patrol.G]

You, mate, are also an imperial Chinese dragon methinks.
LR, whoever he is, could not have written it better, more succinctly, more all-encompassing, himself.

Thank you for the compliment. In the end, I'm simply someone who wants the club I love to be successful. It's not as hard as the Board makes out.

 

[Lockhart Road]

Thank you for the compliment. In the end, I'm simply someone who wants the club I love to be successful. It's not as hard as the Board makes out.

It’s as straightforward as common-sense ... something that has been in minimal supply far too long.

 

[S.Patrol.G]

It’s as straightforward as common-sense ... something that has been in minimal supply far too long.

I truly hope those with some influence can generate the change required. It's a hard change to drive when a Board is not actually responsible or accountable to the members.

 

[Lockhart Road]

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/may/22/what-went-wrong-at-british-steel


Ye gods.

British Steel going under.

Arnholds, who feature in the docudrama, were agents for the Stanton & Staveley Division of British Steel ... and that reminds me of yet another anecdote.

It was circa 1976. We had a bid in to Jardine Engineering for the ductile iron pipes and fittings needed for the rebuild of the seawater intake to the airconditioning system of St. George’s Building, then only Connaught Centre (now Jardine House) away from the waterfront in Central. These were bloody big pipes and fittings and the order was in the vicinity of half a million HK dollars, huge stuff in 1976.

Our competitors were Jardine Engineering’s own trading operation, who were agents for a Continental maker of steel pipes and accessories, French if I recall correctly. The director in charge of the contracting division, my potential client, was an ex-Raj colonial, a Brit by the name of David Agnew. He did not like those in charge of the Jardine Engineering trading division as they expected him to order in-house from them and made no effort to sell, let alone take him to lunch.

Doubtless he also had no intention of using, let alone buying, French pipes and fittings.

Jardine Engineering’s office was in Wong Chuk Hang near Aberdeen, south side of Hong Kong Island, quite a trip in those days, prior to the opening of the Aberdeen Tunnel thru the Peak.

I phoned David the morning the contract was to be decided, and told him I was coming out to see him, to have a chat with him about the contract.

“Dear boy,” he protested in his pukka plumb pommie personal presentation, “I won’t hear of it. I am having lunch at the Hong Kong Club and you are my guest. See you in the Red Room at 12:45. It’s quiet in there and we can talk a bit about what you want to talk about.”

The lunch was three courses plus a bottle of wine, and went on until three p.m. by which time David was on his fourth Armagnac.

The disapproving HK Club staff had gone into unpaid overtime and were going about sending David a message by switching off the lights one by one. We were the only two left in the Red Room.

David was rolling. He had a fifth Armagnac then a sixth, scowling at the club staff as it went darker and darker and delaying his departure even longer in protest.

I think I kept pace with him. He was not one for letting his guests fall behind.

Finally, deciding he’d won the waiting-out game, he signalled for his chit, signed it, made as if to stand up ... then sat down, looked at me, said: “Oh dear, I almost forgot. Do forgive me, old chap.”

He winked at me.

He reached into his suit coat and pulled out an envelope, gave it to me.

It was Jardine Engineering’s signed contract made out to Arnholds for half a million dollars worth of Stanton & Staveley ductile iron pipes and fittings for the St. George’s Building aircon project.

It was a Friday afternoon. I remember taking the contract back to the office circa four p.m., being slapped on the back by Michael Green, the managing director, son of Maurice, told that I stank of Armagnac, to get out of the office and take the weekend off.

“You deserve it.”

I’ve dined out on that story often. It proves buyers will purchase from sellers they personally like because those sellers make an effort, not because they are supposed to feel obliged to purchase in-house. A bit like the attitude of Zhang Ai, the Roadblock, in Episode 7 above.

 

[RussellEbertHandball]

Sanjeev Gupta will probably buy British Steel, if a £30m loan is all that has caused it to go into insolvency.

 

[VineValerian]

Reading this whole saga makes me want to cry.

 

[Sanders]

Fascinating read. Thank you

 

[Magpiespower]

Wish did okay.
They ended up sponsoring the Lakers.
The L.A. f@%king Lakers.
Signed on as jersey sponsor in September, 2017.
Three year deal at $US12-14m a year.
Farken lulz...

 

[Lockhart Road]

Am ready to post Episode 8 - The Epilogue - ‘Great Hall of the Port People’.

This is the culmination of the docudrama, set in the future, describing how the China Strategy was supposed to conclude ... off field.

I emphasise OFF FIELD.

It is not to be confused, please, with the Club’s current over-riding abomination of a performance on-field.

But it may hold the secret formula to both off-field and consequently on-field success.

 

[Lockhart Road]

Episode 8 (The Epilogue) - Great Hall of the Port People








UP THE CHINA RABBIT-HOLE - The TV Docudrama Series


Voice of Narrator:

Looking ahead, as we are at this point, debate with regard to ‘true events’ taking place naturally ends. However, this docudrama continues. Perhaps - no, probably - it does so under a reclassification.

Perhaps it does a costume change into fantasy. Perhaps mythology. Perhaps science fiction. Perhaps, to make useful one of Rowey’s more erudite Roweyisms - perhaps the only one - it becomes ‘rocket surgery’.

I prefer engineering the future to fix the past.

The future arrives. Today becomes new yesterday. Tomorrow becomes new today. And so on and so forth ... etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

Episode 8 - The Epilogue. The plot that has developed and evolved thus far through the episodes of ‘Up the China Rabbit-hole’, until ostensibly hitting a wall, has taken off up that rabbit-hole again ... inspired by and based on what’s been set in motion up to and including Episode 7 - ‘In Every Mountain A Dragon Sleeps’.

What follows is my vision of how the China Strategy, the China adventure, of the Port Adelaide Football Club should have turned out - at some time in the nearish future. With a tweak here and there, this might even have been my original vision, which started taking shape and colour exactly six years ago.

There is a caveat to this vision. If the PAFC continues on its present course - of slipping in to the back seat and drawing the curtains, while AFL House plonks itself squarely behind the wheel - there is the inevitability that the grand scene described below, in the Banquet Hall of the Great Hall of the People, will take place ... with Port Adelaide Football Club nowhere to be seen..



EPISODE 8 - EPILOGUE

Great Hall of the Port People






EPILOGUE SETTING # 1.


Beijing, Great Hall of the People, main dining room, ceiling ten storeys high, stone columns and red curtains ten storeys high, red stars on red silk carpets, red everything, red everywhere, red labels on the white stoneware bottles of Kweichow brand mou tai being carried to the two hundred round tables, each table circuited with its share of the diners numbering two thousand, of all persuasions and pursuits, both genders, predominently Chinese, semi-predominently Australians, served by one thousand Great Hall staff, five per table, half a staff member per diner.





Noise, voices, laughter, toasts, clinking of glassware, cutlery, bone chopsticks and porcelain, even though the main event is happening up front, on the stage - a contract-signing ceremony, four men seated in business suits side-by-side and central at a long table laid with red felt: one is the chairman, the boss, the taipan, the big kahuna of China State Gas & Power Net; another is the Chairman of the AFL Commission. The others are the foreign ministers of the People’s Republic of China and the Commonwealth of Australia, autographing as witnesses. Behind them, alert, paying the closest of attention, anticipating before words come out of mouths, stand their simultaneous interpreters.

At the ‘Top Table’ in front of the stage and looking on, sit Premier Li Keqiang and Prime Minister Scott Morrison. They have already posed several times for the cameras, once exchanging the football scarves they are wearing. ScoMo, not pretending in the slightest that his code allegience had been undermined, not yet, handed the Chinese Premier a Cronulla Sharks ARL scarf. Li Keqiang gave back the Sydney Swans scarf that Malcolm Turnbull had presented to him at the SCG in March 2017 - signifying its usefulness had expired, that the freeze on relations between Beijing and Canberra had since melted away rendering superfluous an extra scarf ... .

Then Li Keqiang accepted from his aide two other football scarves - one black, white, silver, teal - an AFL Power scarf - the other a completely new design with striking blacker than black and whiter than white bars, which nobody had seen before. Li Keqiang draped the Power scarf around Scott Morrison’s neck ... then covered the Sharks scarf around his own neck with the distinct black and white bars, and said something unexpected, reported as:

LI KEQIANG: “Mr. Prime Minister, do you know Mr. Eddie McGuire?”
SCOMO: “I have met him, Mr. Premier.”
LI KEQIANG: “He is not with us here tonight for some reason. Could you please tell Mr. McGuire, first chance you get, that this is not a Collingwood scarf I am wearing. It is a Port Adelaide Football Club scarf, established 1870. We Chinese greatly respect longevity, integrity and non-interference with internal affairs.”

Hanging above the stage, stretching from one side to the other, is gigantic red and gold signage in Chinese and English.

WELCOME TO BEIJING FROM CHINA STATE GAS & POWER NET -


INTERNATIONAL PARTNER OF THE AUSTRALIAN FOOTBALL LEAGUE,


AND JOINT MAJOR SPONSOR AND COMMUNITY PARTNER
OF PORT ADELAIDE FOOTBALL CLUB.


China and Australia are back in love, thanks to the Great Sherrin, an enormous replica of which is also suspended above the stage, gripped in huge hands, the back of one tattooed with the PRC flag, the other with the Australian flag.

Ten tables near the front, off to the left, are filled with PAFC personages and China partners and global brand-name sponsors, with the SA Premier and the Lord Mayor of Port Adelaide & Enfield with their new Chinese mates who have joined in the redeveloping of The Port into an international business, technology, defence industry, education and tourist Mecca ... including the Alberton Oval and its entire Precinct.

There is a GFG table, hosted by Sunjeev Gupta, the seats occupied by his EV partners from UK and from China who include a division of State Net whose ambition to sell or exchange technology and to build electric vehicles in South Australia goes back years. In the centre of the hall, on a spotlighted podium, is the prototype EV Wingspan 35, manufactured in East China, assembled in Whyalla, designed to compliment Tesla, compete with Lexus et al, with mundane Toyota nowhere in the picture.

The Wingspan’s grille is a replica of the Wharf Pylons on the Port River, the so-called Prison Bars that have won more premierships than any other livery in the history of Australian Football. The ‘35’ is in memory of J-Mac, who left the Port Adelaide family, suddenly and tragically, at the end of season 2012.

At the fifty tables ringing the PAFC contingent sit five hundred young Chinese, some teenagers, some grown boys, some small girls, all wearing fashionable sportswear bearing the POWER FOOTY branding that is the in thing with the youngest generations since being featured six months ago by VOGUE China, then featured twice more in subsequent issues.





The magazine focuses on lifestyle, health, sport, leisure, entertainment and adventure as much as fashion.

‘Today, Vogue in China spans three brands - Vogue China , Vogue Me and Vogue Film - and publishes 24 issues per year.’

‘The flagship title boasts a print readership of 2 million, a social media following of 23 million and draws 24 million website visitors per month.’

That’s 24,000,000 hits per month.


https://www.voguebusiness.com/consumers/angelica-cheung-editor-in-chief-vogue-china-market


They have come to Beijing from every direction, these young new-age Chinese, from all over the modern Middle Kingdom. All are students at one or other of the 100 selected schools, colleges and universities that now include on their state-approved curriculum the alternative skilled team sport of Australian Football.

There are other AFL clubs represented, but by fewer representatives, at fewer tables, all farther back in the cavernous mass-populated multi-cultural hall.

At one of the media tables Rucci (in black, white, silver and teal rumpling), and Tom Richardson sit side by side. Richardson has on his gawdy Crows tri-colour tie, unaware that many nearby Chinese suspect he is an agent provocateur for Tibetan independence (the national colours of Tibet are red, yellow and blue), unaware that unseen Chinese State Security police have him under surveillance - not for his tie, which makes their task easy, but for the ‘Touch of the Fumbles’ article he wrote and published in InDaily on 11 April 2016 to pour sarcasm and disrespect on PAFC and thus by association China. He had come oh so close to being detained at Beijing Airport and disappearing for an indefinite period.

https://indaily.com.au/sport/touch-...e-fumbles-the-china-syndrome-vs-ewing-theory/

RICHARDSON: “So this is what has been waiting at the very top of the China rabbit-hole.”
RUCCI (laughing to himself): “Quite a sideshow, eh?”
RICHARDSON: “I see Fages isn’t here.”
RUCCI: “He was the first invited ... by Port’s new CEO. But he opted to fly past, to Korea instead with Nigel Smart to sign up baseball recruits for the Bite.”

Across from Rucci and Richardson at the same media table sit two Eurasian executive directors from Power Community & Communications Corporation - known in the exploding China media industry as ‘Power Com & Com Corp’, or PCCC, a joint venture publicly-listed on the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges having been registered and established by the AFL, PAFC and China State Net Overseas Investments.

PCCC, chaired by Rong Qi, operates out of the 12th floor, immediately below his office in Wanchai North, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR) of China. Discussion has commenced with a consortium of multi-cultural underwriters keen on the potential of IPOs in Hong Kong, Sydney, Singapore and New York.

The two Eurasian executive directors are brother and sister.

They are the son and daughter of Lockhart Road.





With them sits Angelica Cheung, editor-in-chief of VOGUE China. She has studied in Adelaide, securing an MBA at Uni SA; she worked in Hong Kong for a couple of years as a journalist with Eastern Express daily newspaper in the 1990s, then Marie Claire magazine before moving to Shanghai and Elle, then launching VOGUE China.






Clearly Angelica and Miss Road have a special understanding.


https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angelica_Cheung




Mick McGuane Media more than missed the boat, they fell arse up in the water - thanks to Carlito ‘Chicken’ Cacciatori that fateful couple of days in Melbourne in late February 2015 when he over-focused on and oversold a hard-sell media roadshow at AFL House ... while the real coffees, the ones with a business plan and an eye on the biggest of pictures, went cold just down the road (no pun).

Cacciatori tonight sits at one of the outer ten PAFC tables, muttering to himself.

Robin Robbins and Daryl Ander are together at the same table, feeling humbly triumphant as they think back how far all this has come, how good it all feels, how many obstacles have been left behind as a trail of mere debris in their wake.


ROBBINS: “Congrats on your appointment to the Port Board, Daryl.”
ANDER: “Thank you, Robin. Took a long time coming ... and then there was, as there invariably is ... that last unfortunately timed hiccup. But at least it was always a very interesting waiting game.”
ROBBINS: “When did you get official confirmation?”
ANDER: “Last night. On the plane from Melbourne. I sat with the new CEO.”
ROBBINS: “What do you think of him?”
ANDER: “Considering I had a hand in his recruitment I’d say he’s the best CEO in the sporting business world. He won’t take things personally like Thorold was inclined to do, or go lock himself away in his office for hours, or let his EA get away with sending him to virgin territory like the Great Wall in midwinter wearing a polo shirt. And he won’t let the Kaiser get away with selfish short-sighted ego, won’t duck into his shell like a turtle and let the ball pass through to the keeper, only to discover there’s no keeper.”
ROBBINS: “I hope Thorold’s enjoying his retirement break in Sri Lanka. I’ll never forget that breakfast meeting in Melbourne with him and you and LR. February 2015. That’s where it all really began.”
ANDER: “Me sitting inside Brunetti on my own and Thorold sitting outside on his own. And LR and you, mate, showing up late.”
ROBBINS: “LR’s fault. He overslept, even though he denies getting any sleep that night. Blamed the Turkish room boy, Mustafa, for refusing to take a hint, kept knocking on his door to turn down his bed with him in it.”
ANDER: “Mustaf annoyed him.”
ROBBINS: “Don’t go there.”
ANDER: “Have you seen him lately? LR?”
ROBBINS: “Once a week. In Happy Valley. As usual.” (Leans closer, lowers his voice.) “Do you know who it is you’re replacing?”
ANDER (angles his head to his right): “I don’t think he’s been told yet.”
ROBBINS: “His conflict of interest with his employer during the AFL reintroduction of the Prison Bars did him no good.”
ANDER: “The way he handled it, and himself, did him worse. Refusing to stand down from the board and the Club branding committee, even to recuse himself from meetings - on the orders, he says, of his employer.”
ROBBINS: “At what point did Karl Krupp drop him cold?”
ANDER: “Rumour has it that happened when Cacciatori gave Krupp back his biege overcoat with a limp penis tattooed on the lapel.”
ROBBINS: “Really, Daryl?”
ANDER: “Well ... certainly not erect.”
ROBBINS: “Any other changes coming with the composition of the Board?”
ANDER: “What’ve you heard?”
ROBBINS: “One of our plethora of accountants is to retire next. As soon as tomorrow.”
ANDER: “Appointed accountants. Which one?”
ROBBINS: “He played for us ... wore number 11.”
ANDER (nods): “I remember. Not a bad footballer.”


Theme music:

‘Hit the Road, Jack’ (Ray Charles)





CACCIATORI: “Is this going to work? Do you think this is going to work?”

Ander leans towards the ex-director as if intending to be helpful.

CACCIATORI: “If this doesn’t work what are we going to do? Do you think this is going to work?”

Ander’s mouth opens. Robbins places a cautioning hand on Ander’s forearm, shakes his head. ‘Don’t bother,’ his expression suggests. Robbins, ostensibly studying the ornate lighting high above, makes as if he uses a knuckle to nudge a knife across the tablecloth in the Chicken’s direction.

CACCIATORI: “Where is Karl? I’ve got his coat. The ink wouldn’t come out. No matter what I try. Who would do something like that? This won’t work without Karl. Has anyone seen Karl?”

A plain-clothes China State Security officer leans over, taps the Chicken on the shoulder, puts the screen of his Huawei, the latest spy model, in front of him.





The Chicken looks down at it. His face turns from swarthy to a pasty shade of pale for the third time in the TV series.

CACCIATORI: “Karl? Where are you? Have they taken you prisoner, Karl?”


Theme music:

‘Stormy Weather’ (Lena Horne)

 

[Lockhart Road]

EPILOGUE SETTING # 2.

Shanghai International Airport, Pu Dong District.

External view of China Eastern airliner at Gate 13 air bridge being lashed with rain. Camera travels inside to first class, closes in on tall Caucasian passenger with glasses, prominent Roman nose and a pointy bald head jabbing a finger ruthlessly at his iPhone ... the same Huawei model as used by State Security officers.

VOICE (in putonghua then English with Chinese accent): “This is your captain speaking. More bad news for us, I’m afraid... “

The Kaiser is yet again stranded on the tarmac en route as a typhoon rages up the China Coast, and as PAFC sports diplomacy, enterprise success and global brand expansion carries on far to the north.

Without him.

Again.

Krupp has been left fuming in the aftermath of an Extraordinary General Meeting that packed out a hall in the Adelaide Convention Centre, called to vote on changes to the PAFC Constitution. All changes were approved, overwhelmingly - in spite of Krupp campaigning vigorously against any changes at all. It seemed the harder he campaigned, the harder his status quo campaign became.

The changes to the Club Constitution transfer significant decision-making and enactment power away from the Chairman and his directors by:

• Increasing elected board members from two to maximum of five - thereby cutting the Chairman’s traditional dictatorial powers and his controlling influence over appointments to, and operation of, the PAFC Board - with 1) pre-selection of candidates to be monitored by an independent auditor, 2) the process of assessment of candidates to not be restricted to decision of current members of the PAFC Board or executive, and 3) voting members being made as fully aware as practicable of policies, profiles, qualifications and experience of all candidates via, but not restricted to, open information sessions, club media networks and direct digital mailing.
• Authorising the ‘China Strategy’ as an essential Transformation of PAFC, provided that the interests and future of the Club and its Members are fully protected by the appointment of or election to the PAFC Board of at least two directors with a diversification of China, Asia, Asia-Pacific or other international experience totalling not less than five years each.
• Approving the belatedly established China Committee, consisting of the most efficacious mix of Board members, Club executives, and volunteer Members based either in Australia or overseas, all with appropriate China experience or responsibilities, reporting to the CEO and the PAFC Board.
• Approving the rank of Executive General Manager and the appointment or recruitment of qualified candidates, operating directly below and reporting to the CEO, with separate senior executive responsibilities for 1) Football, 2) Business, 3) China, 4) Communications and 5) Finance, Operations and Administration.
• Approving establishment of a Successful Enterprise Committee - consisting of Board members, Executive General Managers and specialist commercial executives of both the Business and the China divisions, a representative of the Communications division, minimum two representatives of Power Community Ltd., plus selected volunteer Members, reporting to the CEO and Board - with overriding emphasis on ‘successful’ as per title.
• Sanctioning the positioning internationally of permanent full-time staff as and when needed, starting immediately, as approved by the PAFC Board, leading up to the registration of global PAFC offices in selected locations.

Krupp swears gutterally to himself. Snatches up the in-flight magazine. Takes as little notice as possible of the red sash diagonally across the cover reading:

CHINA EASTERN AIRLINES IS PROUD TO BE A JOINT MAJOR SPONSOR
OF THE PORT ADELAIDE FOOTBALL CLUB.

You see, when Cathay Pacific’s hacking scandal hit home in Hong Kong, the airline cut its marketing and advertising budget, got rid of accounts that did not rate highly on their scale of priorities or accounts with whom Cathay executives had no personal relationship. Port Adelaide was first to go. The Club’s reaction was to do nothing, except express gratitude that they had an excuse for failure - the hacking. This was an insult to past personnel and volunteers who worked with focus, determination and smarts to not only bring the deluxe carrier, Hong Kong’s own, on board the PAFC China Strategy ... but to be the flagship for it.

Today, with the new Club structure, personnel and purpose, it was a different story. Cathay Pacific had come back to Alberton bearing gifts, to be told that they were too late ... that China Eastern Airlines had put in front of the Club a partnership offer too good to be refused.


EPILOGUE SETTING # 3.

Pro Drinkers Corner across from Happy Valley Race Course, Hong Kong.

Road is reading print version of story from Beijing under byline of Sam Agars accompanied by a panoramic photo taken inside the Great Hall of the People the night before, on the front page of South China Morning Post. He smiles to himself as he takes up a cold stubbie of Tsingtao beer.

ROAD: “Deng Xiaoping, he say something like ... ‘It matters not if the cat or the dog is black or white ... or silver or teal blue ... it’s a good cat if it catches the mouse; it’s a great dog if it catches the rabbit.”

CHINA STATE NET SAYS “THANKS MATE” FROM AFAR

This is the headline for Agars’ article. It has gone viral on the internet, globally, not only in China. It carries a secondary headline.

POWER GIANT RESIDENT DOWN UNDER FOR 20 YEARS SHOWS AUSSIE HEART VIA MASSIVE PARTNERSHIP WITH AFL AND PORT ADELAIDE

LR has seen on his iPad that there is also a prominent report on-line in The Weekend Australian, next to a separate piece under the headline:

FIRB BENDS ITS OWN RULES: APPROVES CHINA STATE NET PURCHASE OF APA GAS PIPELINE

Another headline above a full-page feature article with Rowan Callick’s byline, immediately before the sports section, reads:

SPORTS DIPLOMACY VICTORY CEREMONY IN GREAT HALL - IT TAKES TWO THOUSAND TO TANGO IN BEIJING

A number of contributors to the comments section had made the connection, half in unfriendly terms, some of the other half several complimenting China State Net for their sense of PR, with one enquiring why it had taken them so long to wake up to the need to condition the market in Australia.

LR has searched the worldwide web. The angle that had amused him most was the New York Times editorial which advised the White House, tongue in cheek, to issue an executive order that everyone involved in the arduous negotiations with China urgently take up Australian Football and fly to Beijing wearing smiles and full Port Adelaide regalia. Obviously it works, observed the Times managing editor

Road goes back to focusing on a face in one of the smaller photos in the Post - the face of an occupant of the main PAFC table in the Great Hall.

Camera pans in until it can be seen, despite pixel deficiency inherent with print media, who it is.

It’s Darren Cahill.


Theme music:

‘The Dragon’ (Vangelis)




Darren is sitting next to Mr. Xiao Junxi.

Mr. Xiao is showing Darren his phone.

Camera tightens further, and we are back to the night before, eye-witnesses up close to what was going on between Darren Cahill, a director of PAFC and tennis coach internationale, and Xiao Junxi, promoted to President, International of China State Gas & Power Net.

We see that on the screen of Xiao’s phone is a sequence of action pictures of his son, now in his late teens, wearing whites ... playing tennis at Wimbledon.

Mr. Xiao points to someone behind his son, sitting in the Wimbledon coaching enclosure.

It’s Roger Federer.

XIAO (via Fu Mingfeng): “Thank you, Darren, for the introduction to Roger.”
CAHILL: “Your son is a keen student, and Roger is a great mentor for your son.”
XIAO: “So are you, Darren. He so loves it in Adelaide. Tennis ... cricket ... AFL ... He so loves Port Adelaide Football Club. We are Port Adelaide. All my family. Always will be.”

The three drink a toast in real, genuine Kwei Chow brand mou tai.

No phoney ‘li’l ole blue-collar footy club from Alberton’ hogwash tonight.

“Kan bei,” smiles Darren, winks at the camera ... winks at Lockhart Road.

ROAD (winks back): “Thanks Darren. And thanks to your dad, too. Jack was a team-mate of Peter Chant. So was I. Different teams.”

Road takes a swig of his Tsingtao. He shows the label to the camera. Across the bottle is a diagonal red sash.

TSINGTAO BEER IS PROUD TO BE A JOINT MAJOR SPONSOR
OF THE PORT ADELAIDE FOOTBALL CLUB.

Road looks out of the Pro Drinkers Corner. He peers north across the top of the banyans shrouding Happy Valley Race Course. He sees the Hong Kong Football Club’s three-storey main building where PAFC have held reciprocal partnership rights since Grand Final weekend, September 2013, when Russell Ebert brought up the paperwork from Alberton and took back such a glowing report on Hong Kong and the prospects for the Club that Karl Krupp seized on it for himself and herded his tenderfoot board of directors into town in mid May 2014, to stage a business luncheon and a board meeting at the HKFC.

Rick Mattinson had been part of that group, had stayed on in Hong Kong for a few days. Riding on the ‘Star’ Ferry back to the Island after a Chinese dinner in Tsimshatsui with Mr. and Mrs. Road, Mattinson had pointed at the neon signs atop the phalanx of skyscrapers along the Central District, Wanchai and Causeway Bay waterfronts.

MATTINSON: “Up there. I want to see it up there.”

Road, sitting in the Pro Drinkers Corner all these years later, sees it, looks at it, focuses on it, reads it. It is a bright silver neon sign, thickly bordered in black, on top of the building right behind the multi-storey HQ of the Hong Kong Jockey Club next to the HKFC.

No, not the sign that reads WE ARE PORT ADELAIDE ...

The sign above it. The sign with the moving tally, and the big screen with the photo that is turning the tally over, as thousands of Chinese and tourists crowd into Times Square, point up, look up, laugh: “Ho duk yee wor!” in Cantonese, “Mengmeng da!“ in putonghua - “So cute!” - take selfies or photos of each other with the sign in the background, send them all over China, all around the world. Many are searching their phones for the place to sign up ... ...


Theme music:

‘Power Play’ (Eddie and the Tide)




BringBackTheBars



369,747
Have Signed the Petition So Far


This photo and yet another article will be in VOGUE China next week. The text will include the agreement by the AFL for Port Adelaide to wear Prison Bars for all home games from now on, including versus Collingwood.

Included, too, will be an article about Darren Cahill ... announcing his newest protege - China’s latest fast-rising international tennis tyro.

Lockhart Road checks the PAFC website on his iPad.
Rick Mattinson, GM International Memberships & Merchandise, is doing a superlative job.
International memberships for the Club have skyrocketed to 119,119.
The Crows, including 50% ‘digital’ fake memberships, are 99,999 and flat.
PAFC is at 220,000, all paid up and rising.

International POWER merchandise sales via PAFC’s eCommerce joint venture in China, first announced on the eve of Jiangwan Stadium II in May 2018, properly launched later via VOGUE China, are going into orbit.

Camera pans out, up up and away ... until the Earth is seen rotating on its axis.

The Great Wall of China can easily be identified.

Music is rising from the planet, voices singing, a ballad, louder, louder, stronger, stronger, the words clearer and clearer.

We have heard this before ... on Thursday, 30 April 2015 ... in the Chairman’s Bar of the Hong Kong Football Club ... after the ANZAC Centenary Luncheon.

It is ‘Power To The People’ by John Schumann ... with his multi-cultural chorus of Chinese footballers and Vietnam Vets.

Screen fills in soft-focus: Mumbles, John E., Eric Edmonds and LR: “To us!”

Scene before final fade-out: Camera looking down paternally on Road and his Nokia C2-01 2011 vintage, left alone in Pro Drinkers Corner: representing the spot from where the strings have been pulled on the PAFC China Strategy, from its immaculate conception to its glorious culmination.

Road thinks back to September 2013, when the deal was done between PAFC and the HKFC, with the latter being likened to either a launchpad or command module. Either way the inference was that China was akin to the Moon as far as Australian Football in general and Port Adelaide in particular were concerned.

The full Moon, sailing along silvery through pumes of cloud, fills the screen.

ROAD (lifts his Tsingtao to it): “Here’s to the quiet little bloke. To Pete.”

LR’s playlist via the hi-fi provides the fade-out music:


‘(If You Believe They Put a) Man on the Moon’ (R.E.M.)





————— # —————

 

[Lockhart Road]

Something strange happens.

Suddenly the camera performs an unscheduled zoom.

It travels closer ... closer ... to the Moon.

The happy face of the Man in the Moon comes into focus.


v


v


v



v



v




v






v






v









v











v














v



















v



































oh














bloody




















no

 

[Lockhart Road]

Would love to know more about a certain potential sponsor that was mentioned and why it fell through.

You wish.

 

[VineValerian]

Need a petition - LR for PAFC President/Chairman/Chief Kahuna.

 

[Lockhart Road]

Need a petition - LR for PAFC President/Chairman/Chief Kahuna.

Thank you cobber. I humbly cannot accept. Too much ego. Check the first page or so of this thread.

Of course, should negotiations start ... I’d be first to lead them.