Browne nearer to Pies top job

FORMER Channel 9 boss Jeff Browne is inching closer to a take over as Collingwood president.

Browne has been in direct negotiations with current Pies boss Mark Korda, who is under increasing pressure to navigate a graceful exit from the Holden Centre.

The club’s bitter boardroom stoush could come to a head at a board meeting on Tuesday night.

Browne, 66, is pushing for a peaceful transfer-of-power instead of a bloody full-scale election at December’s annual general meeting.

His camp believes as many as four current Collingwood board members now support a change in leadership and are willing to serve alongside the former AFL legal counsel.

Korda wants Browne to join the board for a handover period, but the challenger’s backers want a clean, immediate changeover.

A breakthrough agreement must be reached in the coming weeks before Browne lodges the signatures required for a full spill of the board at the December 16 AGM.

If a deal is agreed, he will bring as many as three new directors to the club.

Korda, who has served on the Collingwood board since 2007, claimed the club presidency in April, weeks after the sudden exit of long-time Pies boss Eddie McGuire.

Only last week, he declared his intention to remain in the top job until the end of 2022 but several fellow board members have slowly come to the view that the club requires fresh leadership next season and beyond.

The chairman of investment bank MA Financial

Group, Browne was the AFL’s external lawyer for almost two decades and is a close friend of McGuire.

He was managing director of the Nine network from 2006-13 and is well connected at league headquarters.

Collingwood legend Tony Shaw declared last week that the club’s boardroom brawl had become “embarrassing” and needed to be “sorted out immediately”.

It followed revelations a second Magpies director – Victoria Racing Club chairman Neil Wilson – was ineligible to sit on the board.

It was discovered that Wilson was not a qualified voting member of the club but rather a Melbourne Cricket Club member who nominates Collingwood as his AFL club of choice.

Questions over Wilson’s status surfaced after the club reluctantly surrendered its register of voting members to long-time former club solicitor Francis Galbally, who is backing Browne’s push to refresh the board.

Shaw said the club could not wait until the AGM to address the Browne-Korda dispute.