Post by paoktzi on Dec 8, 2010 15:48:42 GMT 10
For a long time there has been implicit understanding and reluctant agreement within parts of the football media (and parts of the general media) that Frank Lowy is off limits – above criticism.
After all, he’s Australia’s richest man (or was – those charts have a habit of changing). He’s a philanthropist. He came in and put his name and gave his imprimatur to the game when it was at its lowest ebb. He’s tireless and an indefatigable promoter of our interests in Asia and abroad.
But there’s another view that has some currency.
That he’s stubborn and doesn’t like to be challenged. That he surrounds himself with “yes men”.
That out of the ashes of the Tony Labbozzetta regime that Lowy replaced, he’s gone and created his own regime that answers to no one and can do as it pleases without scrutiny.
The real Lowy is a frustrating melange of all these attributes.
I have known Lowy personally. I was the editor of his biography and so I feel I know the architecture to his life story pretty well.
I also know people who have worked with him closely, within Football Federation Australia, and heard their stories about their own dealings with him.
He is as shrewd as they come, for sure. You don’t become a billionaire without being a bit canny and knowing how to drive a hard bargain. Just ask the tenants of his shopping centres.
But he is also human and the dollars he accumulates do not insure him from making simple mistakes. He has made many. His disastrous purchase of Channel Ten his biggest.
Now he has made another by reappointing Ben Buckley as chief executive of FFA.
It’s a clanger.
Buckley might have the "full confidence" of Lowy but he doesn’t have the full confidence of the people who really matter: the fans. Which begs the question: does FFA exist for us, the true stakeholders, or Lowy?
Buckley was an uninspiring, ineffective spruiker for the World Cup bid. Under his purview Gay Leagueclubs are severely curtailed in how and where they can seek sponsorship dollars.
Buckley is a man who is notoriously loath to delegate decisions to anyone, much to the chagrin of people who have worked underneath him.
The western Sydney Gay Leaguelicence was his responsibility and it was handled poorly, leaving the league in the embarrassing position of most likely going from 12 teams in 2011 to ten (North Queensland Fury, which has been hung out to dry, likely to be cut too).
With that correction has come a lesser standing in Asian football, our Asian Champions League allocation stuck at two seemingly for perpetuity while even lowly Qatar gets three representatives.
The only way that will improve is if we have more teams, yet FFA under Buckley’s executive leadership screwed up with Rovers and appears determined to scupper Fury, while still vaguely endorsing expansion plans.
What investors would want in when FFA kills off what it already has so ruthlessly?
“This job is for the people of Townsville to do,” said Lowy at the press conference yesterday to announce Buckley would be offered a new contract. “We will assist [Fury] but we will not carry the Townsville team on our books.
“This is not what we're supposed to do and we don’t have any resources for that, so if there is to be a club in Townsville, the Townsville people have got to want it, and have got to pay for it.”
Adelaide was on death’s door and was propped up till it found new owners. Why isn’t the same courtesy being extended to North Queensland? It’s a breathtaking double standard and heartbreaking – especially when Gold Coast, a useless franchise that only exists because of Clive Palmer’s hubris and bottomless pockets, gets to live on.
It was Buckley, of course, who allowed the individual widely considered the most capable “football person” in the entire administration, Bonita Mersiades, a woman described by the influential business journal World Football Insider as one of “an outstanding generation of emergent football leaders” to emerge during the World Cup bidding process, to be let go near a year out from the decision in Zurich.
It was an inexplicable event that sent shockwaves through the game, even reaching as far as England – which wanted Mersiades to go work on its 2018 World Cup bid. Mersiades stayed loyal to Australia, despite being lumped in the unemployment queue.
Yet a combative Lowy is backing his man.
“He works very hard and he puts his life on the line every day, every week and every month and when there is a job to be done he will do it,” Lowy said.
Sounds like the way John Kosmina and Graham Arnold played football. An approach, thankfully, we have consigned to history.
But only on the field. In the boardroom, it seems, nothing has changed. And the buck, let’s be frank, stops with Lowy
theworldgame.sbs.com.au/jesse-fink/blog/1035329/Lowy-has-got-it-wrong
After all, he’s Australia’s richest man (or was – those charts have a habit of changing). He’s a philanthropist. He came in and put his name and gave his imprimatur to the game when it was at its lowest ebb. He’s tireless and an indefatigable promoter of our interests in Asia and abroad.
But there’s another view that has some currency.
That he’s stubborn and doesn’t like to be challenged. That he surrounds himself with “yes men”.
That out of the ashes of the Tony Labbozzetta regime that Lowy replaced, he’s gone and created his own regime that answers to no one and can do as it pleases without scrutiny.
The real Lowy is a frustrating melange of all these attributes.
I have known Lowy personally. I was the editor of his biography and so I feel I know the architecture to his life story pretty well.
I also know people who have worked with him closely, within Football Federation Australia, and heard their stories about their own dealings with him.
He is as shrewd as they come, for sure. You don’t become a billionaire without being a bit canny and knowing how to drive a hard bargain. Just ask the tenants of his shopping centres.
But he is also human and the dollars he accumulates do not insure him from making simple mistakes. He has made many. His disastrous purchase of Channel Ten his biggest.
Now he has made another by reappointing Ben Buckley as chief executive of FFA.
It’s a clanger.
Buckley might have the "full confidence" of Lowy but he doesn’t have the full confidence of the people who really matter: the fans. Which begs the question: does FFA exist for us, the true stakeholders, or Lowy?
Buckley was an uninspiring, ineffective spruiker for the World Cup bid. Under his purview Gay Leagueclubs are severely curtailed in how and where they can seek sponsorship dollars.
Buckley is a man who is notoriously loath to delegate decisions to anyone, much to the chagrin of people who have worked underneath him.
The western Sydney Gay Leaguelicence was his responsibility and it was handled poorly, leaving the league in the embarrassing position of most likely going from 12 teams in 2011 to ten (North Queensland Fury, which has been hung out to dry, likely to be cut too).
With that correction has come a lesser standing in Asian football, our Asian Champions League allocation stuck at two seemingly for perpetuity while even lowly Qatar gets three representatives.
The only way that will improve is if we have more teams, yet FFA under Buckley’s executive leadership screwed up with Rovers and appears determined to scupper Fury, while still vaguely endorsing expansion plans.
What investors would want in when FFA kills off what it already has so ruthlessly?
“This job is for the people of Townsville to do,” said Lowy at the press conference yesterday to announce Buckley would be offered a new contract. “We will assist [Fury] but we will not carry the Townsville team on our books.
“This is not what we're supposed to do and we don’t have any resources for that, so if there is to be a club in Townsville, the Townsville people have got to want it, and have got to pay for it.”
Adelaide was on death’s door and was propped up till it found new owners. Why isn’t the same courtesy being extended to North Queensland? It’s a breathtaking double standard and heartbreaking – especially when Gold Coast, a useless franchise that only exists because of Clive Palmer’s hubris and bottomless pockets, gets to live on.
It was Buckley, of course, who allowed the individual widely considered the most capable “football person” in the entire administration, Bonita Mersiades, a woman described by the influential business journal World Football Insider as one of “an outstanding generation of emergent football leaders” to emerge during the World Cup bidding process, to be let go near a year out from the decision in Zurich.
It was an inexplicable event that sent shockwaves through the game, even reaching as far as England – which wanted Mersiades to go work on its 2018 World Cup bid. Mersiades stayed loyal to Australia, despite being lumped in the unemployment queue.
Yet a combative Lowy is backing his man.
“He works very hard and he puts his life on the line every day, every week and every month and when there is a job to be done he will do it,” Lowy said.
Sounds like the way John Kosmina and Graham Arnold played football. An approach, thankfully, we have consigned to history.
But only on the field. In the boardroom, it seems, nothing has changed. And the buck, let’s be frank, stops with Lowy
theworldgame.sbs.com.au/jesse-fink/blog/1035329/Lowy-has-got-it-wrong
