Why does a Football Club Exist?
Hint: the clue is the name
Why does a football club exist? What is its purpose?
Call me naïve, but I rather think the clue is in the name.
A footy club exists, presumably, to play, promote, and extol the virtues and joys of playing football in the community. People come together at a football club because of geography (the local club they love) and a shared love of the game.
This should not be controversial, but this week in Australia, the purpose of a football club came into sharp relief thanks to a massive media storm that swirled around the appointment of a professing Christian to the position of CEO at Essendon Football Club. A member of the professional Australian Football League.
Much ink has been spilled on the issue.
Over at The Guardian, Uniting Church minister and academic, Dr Elenie Poulos, boiled the issue do to a clash of ‘values’. She writes that the values of Essendon FC and Andrew Thorburn’s church, City on a Hill, are at odds with one another and therefore Thorburn’s position was never tenable.
Perhaps.
It seems to me, if we dig a little deeper, that it’s not only a question of values.
Further down it’s a question of purpose, which is to say that purpose precedes values.
To come back to my original question: Why, primarily, does a footy club exist? What is its purpose?
It’s not to promote a political vision.
It’s not to band around a specific ethnicity.
It’s not to band around a sexual/gender identity.
Nor is it to proclaim a particular religious posture.
It’s about football. Plain and simple.
And regardless of a person’s political persuasion;
regardless of a person’s ethnicity;
regardless of a person’s sexual or, indeed, religious identity;
the point of a football club—its raison d'etre is that people can and should be able to gather around their shared love of football.
The moment a President or CEO of any stripe forgets or transitions away from the primary purpose for which the club exists, any powerbroker can come in and push an agenda (as has apparently happened at Essendon) that alienates a portion of the supporter base. For example:
Suppose the new Essendon CEO had been a dyed-in-the-wool Labor supporter, a Dan Andrews-stan, and began using the club as an arm of the Labor party. Not good. Not appropriate. But why? Not because they are a Labor supporter per se, but because they are steering the club away from its primary purpose. Namely to play, promote, and extol the virtues and joys of playing football in the community. To use the club as a pawn in a political game would be entirely inappropriate. Not only that, but such a CEO would alienate many of their supporter base who may have a variety of other political preferences or persuasions.
Similarly, if the new Essendon CEO had been committed to a minority religion and as in the example above began using the club to advance that religion’s cause. Again, not good. Again, not because of the religion in question, but because they are steering the club away from its primary purpose of playing, promoting, and extolling the virtues and joys of playing footy. And, again, such a CEO would likely alienate a portion of their supporter base.
All that to say, I think Essendon’s biggest mistake has been forgetting why they exist in the first place. Namely to play and promote football. Players and fans don't come together because of their social class, ethnicity, religious commitment, or gender identity. Their shared love of the football is what brings them together.
If the club were to say: ‘We love football, but you’re only welcome here if you support our ethno-religious-political ambitions and persuasions’, it’s not really a football club anymore. In this scenario, football becomes the side hustle, subservient to the club’s higher loyalties. This is precisely what happened at Essendon.
Essendon’s leaders forgot the primary purpose for which the club existed, and as a result they were vulnerable to shifting social/cultural/political winds that currently rule the day.
A lack of purpose, fuelled by rudderless leadership, allowed football to be shunted to the side. A new purpose was imparted upon the club from without by an aggressive media campaign that was intent on bringing down the man the club had thought would lead them into a more successful era.
Against this tsunami of ill-informed media bombast, Essendon’s ‘leadership’ crumbled.
Essendon’s president, Dave Barham—under pressure from left leaning media and even Victorian Premier, Dan Andrews—decided that he’d rather force Thorburn, a committed Christian, out the door (no place wrongthink here!), ironically in the name of tolerance and inclusivism. To quote the man himself:
In interview processes, you’re not allowed to ask about people’s religious [beliefs]. It’s against the law. But what we did, as soon as we saw them, we acted.
Essendon Football Club backed themselves into a socio-political ideological corner from which it could not escape without sacrificing Thorburn as their scapegoat.
Had football been kept front and centre as the primary purpose of the club there might have been the potential for a different outcome.
At this point, let me be clear:
If football is the main thing: it shouldn’t matter who the CEO is. They could be of any race, gender, religious creed, or sexual identity. A football club CEO’s job is to keep the club solvent and encourage participation in football. If they do this well, they will welcome people across the entire spectrum of the community for that purpose. And any CEO who loses sight of that runs the risk of alienating and marginalising any number of sub-groups within their organisation. (Not to mention the absurdity in thinking a CEO could or even should be expected to support every competing personal agenda on any and all matters within a large organisation!)
The trick for any CEO is to understand why the organisation exists and to promote that relentlessly to drive unity within it. In so doing, players and employees can enjoy freedom of conscience to live—with humility and respect towards each other—according to their values rather than have them enforced from the top down.
Could Thorburn have done that?
His history at NAB in backing the AFL’s Pride Round, for example, suggested yes, but now, sadly, we’ll never know.
The media’s response to Thorburn’s appointment, and many on social media with them, suggest that regardless of Thorburn’s prior actions at NAB in promoting the AFL’s Pride Round, they couldn’t stomach a Christian within a club whose primary purposes had been co-opted away from football.
Better to oust Thorburn now rather than to see what he actually does. (Not unlike the movie, Minority Report, where the crime is punished before it is committed).
And that’s a shame. We’re all poorer for it. And more fearful. And that’s no way to live. I’d like to think we can be better than that. I pray we will be.