The parallels are uncanny.
50 years ago, Melbourne Cricket Club President Sir Albert Chadwick spearheaded the campaign to keep major-event Australian Rules football and cricket at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, following the recent opening of the brand-new ‘VFL Park’ at Waverley.Fast-forward to the 2021 AFL Premiership Season winding down, this season saw the AFL Grand Final played away from the MCG for just the third time in VFL/AFL history.
Chadwick: A Man of Many Parts, authored by Nick Richardson and published by the MCC, is the first biography produced about one of the Club’s most enigmatic but forward-thinking and decisive Presidents.
This excerpt details Sir Albert’s ruthless, yet progressive leadership that he had displayed as a footballer, war veteran, businessman and sports administrator. And when faced with the battle between the coveted and traditional, versus the sparkling and new, it was Chadwick who discovered the power and emergence of public relations and stakeholder management.
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The MCC waited a year after Waverley opened before it took decisive steps aimed at changing perceptions about the new ground. The 12 months gave the club time to look at crowd numbers, listen to other clubs and players, collect feedback from fans and hear what its own members thought. There was evidence from fans about the seemingly constant drizzle and rain that engulfed the Waverley ground and the lack of public transport servicing the ground. VFL Park was isolated, in a city where every other major sporting ground was close to something else, but Chadwick was clear in his view that Waverley was a challenge the MCC had to meet head on.In April, 1971, the MCC outlined a draft public relations strategy that began: “The following outline has been prepared on the basis that the chief problem confronting the MCC is its issue of the Waverley Football Ground.” The notion of a public relations strategy was still in its infancy in Australia. It is likely that Chadwick first became aware of the uses of public relations during his time with the RAAF, which established its own public relations directorate in 1940. It took another nine years for the Public Relations Institute of Australia to be established, but the growth that followed was impressive, with an annual spend of $12 million on public relations by the end of the 1960s. Chadwick’s faith in public relations helping to support a specific initiative was not particularly innovative in a corporate environment but it was unheard of to deploy it in a sporting context. Sport didn’t need promoting outside the media coverage it generated around its own events, matches and tournaments—or so the theory went.
But the advent of Waverley was an issue that had consequences for others: it was, in essence, a competition for the soul of Melbourne sport. The MCG had history, tradition and a cherished place in Australian hearts. The new stadium was an interloper, with potential and ambition. Chadwick instinctively understood the challenge confronting the MCC and decided to use a practice from his commercial experience to help tap into the public feeling for the MCG. But it was a delicate piece of positioning: the MCC needed the VFL’s co-operation to hold some finals matches at the MCG and it couldn’t be seen to be actively agitating against the VFL’s new progeny. Any sign of the MCC’s fingerprints on a sustained denigration of the new ground would jeopardise the MCC’s working relationship with the VFL. It had to be subtle and careful, not always the defining features of public relations’ campaigns. This strategy became an extensive piece of messaging that had three interrelated and ambitious aims: to promote the importance of the MCG, to highlight the problems around Waverley, and to insulate the MCC from any blowback.
Critical to the strategy was that MCC officials stay in the background of any debate “with a view to minimising accusations of partisanship” while remaining focused on “maintaining the MCC’s pre-eminent position”. Thereafter followed a detailed strategy that set out to preserve the MCG’s position as one of the world’s great stadiums, which would be established “beyond doubt in the minds of the sporting public, mass media, politicians, various authorities and the football clubs themselves”, especially when it came to the MCG being the chosen venue for VFL finals matches. It was, in some ways, an illuminating document, modern in its conception and subtle in its goal to reduce the perception of bias. But it was also another tactic in the MCC’s long-standing defence of its privileged place in the Melbourne sporting scene, afforded through its hold on the MCG. The gravity of the challenge to the MCG’s pre-eminence galvanised the MCC into adopting actions that it previously would have spurned as perhaps untoward. There were no misgivings, no cavils and no remonstrations this time; the stakes were too high.
One of the interesting threads to the strategy was to “reinforce the reputation of the MCC as a progressive body which acts in the best interest of sport generally”. The notion of the MCC being “progressive” might have been debatable, but there was no doubt it saw itself as a guardian of sport, most profoundly, all sport held at the MCG. And as such, it also wanted to promote public interest in cricket, which was going through a lull in patronage and interest. The first one-day international between Australia and England had been held at the ground on January 5, following the washed-out Ashes Test over the 1971 New Year but the big crowds that would be drawn to the 50-over a side game were still some years away. Nonetheless, cricket was an important point of difference for the MCG because Waverley was not equipped for cricket and wouldn’t become so until the World Series Cricket schism of 1977. The MCC’s public relations strategy also recommended exploring other uses for the ground, outside of football, and to develop partnerships with organisations to help that happen. This was a significant departure from the norm: the MCC membership might have represented a cross-section of interests and backgrounds, but the club’s approach was traditionally limited to sporting priorities. Looking outside those considerations was opening the door to a brave new world. Complicating the picture was a stormy political crisis about the impending tour of the South African cricket team, due the following summer. While the public relations strategy identified the tour as a potential issue to be addressed, there was no direction on what position the club should take. (A South African Rugby Union tour turned ugly with protests in June, 1971 and helped galvanise the Australian Board of Control for International Cricket’s decision to cancel the cricket tour.)
The public relations strategy was implemented in several ways—based around support, access and economic pressure points, targeting interested parties. The strategy included:
- a survey of football fans on the MCG compared to Waverley (a step based on the premise that the MCG would indeed be the preferred venue for football spectators);
- a survey of newspaper sports editors, writers and commentators to identify their leanings on the subject and enlist their support if they came down on the side of the MCG;
- canvassing and publicising the views of those authorities who were dealing with the transport issues at Waverley, including the local council, the Metropolitan Transport Authority, Victorian Railways and police;
- publicising how difficult it was for fans from Geelong, and the western and northern suburbs, to get to Waverley.
The economic point was preparing a financial statement that showed how the VFL clubs “are bleeding themselves to finance Waverley to the detriment of their own members”. The MCC did commit to re-examine ways of improving facilities at the MCG, especially for non-members. The club’s solution to the staid nature of cricket was a big concession to commercialism and an intriguing (and unintended) forecast of what was to come: “sponsor cricket matches, particularly on interest and international plane, which will inject great excitement and spectacle into the sport”. The scale of the strategy illuminated just how significant the Waverley issue had become for the MCC. Chadwick recognised the threat and was ruthless in adopting the strategy.
A year later, the club was presented with an analysis of the strategy, by the man behind the plan, public relations practitioner Leonard Barker. His first point was that the strategy had worked, describing it as “worthwhile progress”, especially when it came to the media’s attitude towards the club, the Trustees and to Waverley. “There is now much wider acceptance of the fact that the development of Waverley to the point where it could cater for all finals games is not necessarily in the best interests of either the clubs or the general public. There has also been a much wider question of the economics of the Waverley development and its impact on club finances generally. These changes in attitude have been achieved without involving the MCC in any controversies: indeed, neither the club, its office bearers or officials have been publicly identified with any criticisms of the VFL.”
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Chadwick: A Man of Many Parts is available for online purchase via the MCG Shop from $40.Banner Image: Photograph – Melbourne Football Club, Premiers 1926. Image courtesy of the Melbourne Cricket Club Museum collection (M32).