I WANT TO LEAVE A LEGACY
■ Cats are still in good-to-great stage ■ Coach Chris Scott has plenty of time left ■ ‘Bottom out’ not in club’s vocabulary
The Cats’ preliminary final loss to Melbourne on Friday night brought an incredible era to an end with Brian Cook calling time on his 23-year tenure as club CEO. As Cook weighs up his future – and the possible lure of the top job at Carlton – he spoke to GREG DUNDAS about his remarkable time at the Cattery.
THE Cats’ preliminary final thumping from Melbourne on Friday night marked the end of an era for the Geelong Football Club.
While it remains to be seen what the Cats will do with their ageing playing list in the offseason, the game did draw the curtain on Brian Cook’s 23year reign as club chief executive officer.
Whether his 32-year run as a club boss in the AFL will continue next year at Carlton is one of the big questions now swirling around the Cats.
When he spoke to the Geelong Advertiser recently, Cook, 65, confided he was “done with pre-game president’s functions” and looking forward to helping the club and his protege Steve Hocking in a part-time capacity as he eased towards retirement.
But new opportunities have emerged in recent weeks, most notably a reported offer to be Carlton CEO.
Cook returned home from Perth this week and is understood to be considering his options.
But he was in a reflective mood when he joined the Addy to look back on a career as a CEO that started in 1990, the first year of the AFL.
The secret to his success, he said, was simple: he leads by a strict set of values and recruits staff and players who align with those values and put the team first.
“I’ve never aspired to be the best leader of a club,” he said.
“I’ve always aspired to be the leader of the best team.
“There’s a difference, and I’ve spent so much time trying to develop the best teams … and getting them to interact together.
“I do want to leave a legacy, and I want it to be about the sustainability of the culture.
“If that is sustainable for a long period of time after I leave, because of the depth we’ve developed in our organisation and its leaders at every level, then I’d be really happy.”
Stability has been a Cook hallmark. Discounting Gary Ayres, who left Geelong under contract at the end of Cook’s first year, 1999, Cook has worked with just three senior coaches in 31 years – Mick Malthouse (West Coast, 1990-98), Mark Thompson (1999-2010) and Chris Scott (from 2011).
While some critics have suggested Scott’s time at Geelong might be drawing to a close, Cook was steadfast in his support of the coach. He also pointed out that Hocking was a keen Scott admirer, and the leading voice behind his appointment 11 years ago.
“It’s my personal view Chris has got plenty of time left,” Cook said. “He’s got a pretty good track record; win-loss.
“Apart from that, he’s developed as a person and a coach over the time.
“I have a particular belief that most coaches are OK; they’ve just got to have the right environment and the right players. There are a few other things that count apart from their own coaching ability.
“Chris has developed really well (and) been very astute.
“There have been times I reckon where we’ve over-performed, not that our fans would agree with that.
“Sometimes I compare our team with others over the years and I don’t know if we actually had the same talent as a few others.”
I’ve never aspired to be the best leader of a club. I’ve always aspired to be the leader of the best team.
LURED by new Cats president Frank Costa after the 1998 season for what he thought was “maybe a three-year job”, Cook was close to quitting after three months but ended up staying in the CEO role for 23 years.
The Cats have signed Cook to stay at least two more years in an ambassadorial role that will allow him to oversee completion of the GMHBA Stadium rebuild.
If the challenge of fixing Carlton’s wretched culture does not draw him in, it would be fitting to see him complete the stadium, as he has been the mastermind and driving force behind the project for 20 years.
While some have suggested the final stage should have a stand named after Cook and his late mate Costa or statues of them on its concourse, that idea contradicts their own policy of always promoting the team ahead of the individual.
Costa’s well-worn business motto for that was “character first, talent second”.
Cook admits he should have been more diplomatic in his early days at Kardinia Park when he upset some insiders by saying the club was “great at being average”. In time, he learned the club had bold aspirations but lacked direction.
“There was an amazing amount of ambition to be the best but they didn’t know how to be; they just hadn’t lived it; that’s my opinion, for what it’s worth,” he said.
“They always had a fair bit of talent, particularly before I arrived, but just couldn’t somehow win a premiership.
“When I reflect on it now, Geelong not only loved its superhero talents … it actually worshipped them.
“It became obvious to me that in the DNA of Geelong there was this love, admiration and adoration of its most talented players.
“My perception was that was too individualistic. It was too talent driven.
“If someone said, ‘What are your major achievements in your 20-odd years?’, I can rattle off all sorts of things in terms of stadium development, three premierships, turning the turnover from $18m to $60m …
“(But) the thing I think really catalysed the success was the ability to swing the culture a little bit.
“We were never going to take the love of talent out of the DNA of Geelong.
“To try to do that would’ve been bad management, but we just swung the pendulum a little bit for our supporters and our staff and our players to understand and play ‘team’ better at every level.
“From my perception, that’s been the biggest difference.”
COOK shakes his head when he thinks about how much the football industry has grown in his time working in the game.
But some things never change in club-land. Like the way the scoreboard accentuates emotions. His analogy for it is: “The chicken tastes better when you win.
“When we win, everyone, all the sponsors and the coteries they love the food, but if you lose, the chicken was terrible, it was cold, sausage rolls weren’t nice.
“And when you lose, even the traffic lights seem to stay on red for longer, and everyone else around you is driving poorly. That’s how other people perceive it.”
It could make for a volatile and testy workplace, but Cook’s response is calm and measured.
“I’d often get staff coming to me distressed after a loss saying, ‘All the fans are having a crack at me’, and I’d just say, ‘Look, it has nothing to do with you’,” he said.
“My message is, when we’re not playing well or losing, make sure you’re doing everything else right, so concentrate on that. So we know when the playing comes right, we’ll be really good again.”
Under Cook, the Cats were on a quest to go from “good to great”, a mission that will continue with Hocking.
“That journey often takes a generation. I think we’re still in that good-to-great stage,” Cook says.
“At one stage, I think we were poor. I reckon we got to good pretty quickly. By 2007-08 we got to good.
“I think we’ve been good, very good now, I reckon, as a holistic club.
“I’m not sure we are great; we’re very good though.”