High Flyers Peggy O’Neal

This month, in our CPA Australia interview series featuring Australian leaders, Peggy O’Neal – president of Richmond Football Club and the first female president in the sport’s 120-year history – talks about her challenges and the “public face” she has to

You spent your childhood in America’s Blue Ridge Mountains. What was that like?

I was born into a coalmining family in “wild, wonderful West Virginia”. If you think it’s remote now, it was very remote then – there were 25 houses. I have one vivid memory. The coal train passed through town and the houses were on one side of the track, the two-room school on the other. The mothers used to gather when it was time to go to school because if the train was still in position, we had to crawl under it to get there. The man at the station would say, “It’s all clear now, you can go!” and we’d run under the train and go up the hill to school on the other side. When my father stopped being a coalminer, we moved to a larger town. My new school had indoor toilets – I thought I had arrived!

Do you consider the simplicity of your childhood an advantage?

I do. You couldn’t take ballet lessons but you had a great sense of freedom and a sense that everybody was looking out for one another. And you really had a chance to be a child and to play. You made up your own games.

Speaking of which, you played gridiron?

By the time I was in sixth grade, we lived in a town of about 1500 people. We had a post office, street signs and a traffic light – just one. This was in Virginia but still in the Appalachian Mountains and, like lots of small towns in Australia, sport was a big part of the social fabric. So Friday Night Lights, the book and TV series, was very much what we did: it was football in autumn, basketball in winter and baseball in summer. We had a girls’ team that played a couple of games a year and I was quarterback. Then I went to university, where there were a bunch of teams but I got studying. And I didn’t like getting knocked around.

So, what brought you to Australia?

I met an Australian backpacker in a bar in Greece. I was on a two-week vacation and he was on his trip around the world. He said he was going to the United States and he did. The next year, we got married then moved to Melbourne in 1989.

Do you remember your first AFL game?

I do. I heard it on the radio but my first time at a game was April of 1993. It was this beautiful autumn afternoon with the sun shining. We lost to Melbourne FC and the crowds weren’t even that big back then but I loved the spectacle, the athleticism of it and thought, “This is something I want to continue to do.” Attending was much better than listening to the radio!

Why make Richmond your team?

When I started work as a lawyer at what’s now Herbert Smith Freehills, it became apparent you had to have a team. I had moved to Richmond and it was around the time of the Save Our Skins campaign [a drive to raise $1 million for the then debt-crippled club] so I thought, “I’ll go with my community team; they need some help.” The rest is history, as they say.

You helped the club in a number of ways but were you surprised when Greg Miller proposed that you join the board?

I gave legal advice helping to set up a coterie [membership scheme] for The Tommy Hafey Club [Richmond’s high-net-worth supporters’ group]. I had never spoken to Greg Miller so when I got his call to catch up for coffee, I thought, “Maybe there’s another little legal job or some fundraising.” I was very surprised when he asked if I’d be interested in joining the board.

You became Richmond president in 2013 and your predecessor, Gary March, described you as a “very bolted-on Tiger” who’d hardly missed a game. Then last year there was a board challenge. How did you manage that?

In 2015, we had a really good season – we were in the finals – and we had an election for the first time in a while. But in 2016, two or three groups went to the media saying, in effect, “We want to be the board.” How did we handle it? It was pretty simple, actually. Everybody on this board has been elected by the members to do a job and our duty is to continue to do that job until we are replaced.

Last year you compared your early years as president to acting a part in a play.

The public face people make for you sometimes is not who you are. You have to stay true to your principles. In a play there are villains and heroes and depending on the time, you’re one or the other. Or maybe if things are going well, you’re invisible and the focus is on the team, coach and all the good stories. It’s old-fashioned to think a president is a dictator who makes things happen. I see myself principally as chairman of the board, making collective decisions. That’s what boards do. It’s a committee. If you don’t like working on a committee, you shouldn’t be with the board.

Richmond’s recent gains include the Puma sponsorship. Can you talk about any other developments?

Swinburne University of Technology has just become the naming rights partner for Punt Road Oval. Bang & Olufsen came on board this year.

Jeep has just extended for another three years and we have more to announce as all the t’s are crossed and i’s dotted. We have the Korin Gamadji Indigenous leadership and training institute. And the Melbourne Indigenous Transition School is a unique partnership, even in world sports. Twenty-two Indigenous seventh-graders come to school at Punt Road every day: 11 boys and 11 girls. All of them have scholarships at private schools in Melbourne

“If you don’t like working on a committee, you shouldn’t be with the board.” PEGGY O’NEAL

next year. The transition school aims to improve the retention rate when they become eighthgraders. They have wonderful enthusiasm and energy, and every day you’ll see staff and players doing kick-to-kick with them at recess.

There’s always the challenge of holding on to talent. Are you worried about Essendon, North Melbourne or St Kilda chasing Dustin Martin?

I would be surprised if those are the only clubs speaking to him. Everybody would like to have a Dustin Martin in their side. He is a fantastic player but also popular and involved inside the club. It’s a big decision for him but I know that he is happy here and we believe it will be us.

As chair of the Victorian government’s Inquiry into Women and Girls in Sport and Active Recreation [2014-15], was it disappointing to not have a team in the women’s league?

It was. We’ve been involved in gender equity in sport for a while, starting with a business proposition to boost female members. Then we decided we needed to do a lot more around gender equity at all levels of the club. So the Australian Sports Commission and the AFL funded a study on the barriers to women taking greater leadership roles. We were the guinea pigs; we implemented the suggestions in the report. Some we hit and some we didn’t and it shows that you have to have intent and it’s hard to make things change. We thought we had a lot to offer in our application: our continued development of Indigenous girls’ football, plus our close relationship with the Defence Force and the female coaches who have worked with us. But there were only four licences in Victoria and we’ll be in a great position for the next round.

What does the future hold?

Here at Richmond, we’re trying to bring the premiership home. Everything is focused on that and our financial stability has improved our chances. We’re still the only debt-free club in Victoria. In a couple of years I’ll be finished as president – we put in a two-term limit at the last AGM – but that means I can go and watch games again, put on the beanie and be a loud barracker in the crowd!