Crikey

The Collingwood Football Club AGM at the MCG tonight should be an absolute belter.

President Eddie McGuire has just presided over an $8 million write-down courtesy of a poorly managed $18 million push into the pokies business, yet he wants to remain in power for the foreseeable future.

The Sunday Herald Sun’s Glenn McFarlane interviewed Eddie ahead of the AGM and the AFL’s longest serving incumbent President came up with these gems:

“My job is to do what I have always done at the Collingwood Football Club, and that is to make money.”

“Yes, the club made a mistake with the pubs, but what I am not doing is leaving it all to someone else. We will cop the whack and we will fix it.”

“We have known about the situation for 18 months. This is ancient history in our minds. The pubs are gone, so is the money. But we will fix it.”

“When I got on to the plane to go to Sydney, I probably should have resigned for two years and then come back again. I was on top of everything before I went to Sydney, and then, for two years, perhaps I wasn’t. But now I am all over it again, terrorising everyone.”

Hang on a minute. If Eddie’s job is to make money and he’s just presided over the most disastrous non-football investment by an AFL club, why on earth isn’t he doing the honourable thing and resigning?

Eddie is clearly sensitive about tonight. He went onto one of the major Collingwood forums and asked for questions in advance. After a few heavy hits and honest appraisals of Eddie’s presidency, he went to ground. And this is a very pro-Eddie forum which he claims to read every night “until Carla drags me to bed”.

I last went to a Collingwood AGM in 2001 where Neal Woolrich got up and asked the hard questions about conflicts of interest and was then interviewed by 3AW’s Steve Price. Check out the package here.

Collingwood is playing strange games in terms of accessing tonight’s AGM. The call centre advised that a member who signed up last week would have speaking rights but then the position changed at the Lexus Centre.

There are plenty of issues to explore around Collingwood’s appalling pokies practices and losses. Whilst the Diamond Creek Tavern and The Beach hotel in Albert Park have now been jettisoned, pokies remain a big part of its operation.

The venue in Caroline Springs is still a mile shy of its promised $1.45 million charitable contribution, Woolworths runs the club’s Coach & Horses Hotel in Ringwood which is pitched as a “Family Entertainment Centre” and The International in Lilydale is developing a retirement village right around the pokies venue.

As a Broadmeadows boy made good, Eddie should know how regressive the pokies are in targeting poor addicts and get Collingwood right out of the industry altogether. If not, he should stand aside for someone who will.

*If you’re in possession of a Collingwood membership card, please email smayne@crikey.com.au.