It was a long, exhaustive search that ended when Gillon McLachlan stepped into the office next to his at AFL headquarters and asked Andrew Dillon if he would do him the honour of being the next AFL boss.
More than a year after McLachlan announced he was standing aside after arguably the most successful stint a CEO has had sitting atop the red leather throne at Docklands, the AFL has finally settled on handing the job over to the league’s executive general manager football operations, or in non-corporate speak, one of the other big dogs already on the chief executive committee.
Dillon represents a safe choice.
He has wandered the halls of AFL House for more than two decades and understands better than anyone else the pitfalls and booby traps of running the biggest sporting competition in the country.
But who is Andrew Dillon? And was he the right choice for the job?
Law and order at the AFL
There are few paragraphs that sum up Dillon better than the opening lines of his profile on the AFL website.
“Has a Bachelor of Commerce and a Bachelor of Laws from the University of Melbourne and a post-graduate diploma in Applied Finance and Investment from the Securities Institute of Australia.”
If those words make you think of a clean-cut bloke in a suit with a private school background, you’d be right.
Dillon spent some time in the mid-90s at your standard “three-surname-titled law firm”, Corrs Chambers Westgarth, before moving to Village Roadshow in 1997 as their in-house legal counsel, and joining the AFL in 2000 to do the same gig.
From there, he rose through the ranks of the league in legal and development roles that saw him gain a wide range of experience as McLachlan’s right-hand man, becoming a veritable jack of all trades and master of some.
On the field, while Dillon never made it any higher than amateur leagues, he did play 290 games for the Old Xaverians in the VAFA, and was one of four players to play in six consecutive premierships from 1995 to 2000.
A rebounding defender that always wore long sleeves, he was said to be solid rather than spectacular. Reliable rather than a game changer. Someone who was good enough to get the job done and be consistently named in the best players, but wouldn’t kick goal of the year or take a screamer.
And those are exactly the traits the AFL will want to see in Dillon as its new CEO.
Religion, connections and the world of sport
Dillon isn’t the first in his family to sit atop a sporting organisation tree. His wider household is intrinsically linked with Australian sport.
His father, John, a fellow lawyer, became the eighth president of the VAFA in 1984, and was the chairman of the Melbourne Racing Club.
His father-in-law is ex-Melbourne Cricket Club president and former Test opener Paul Sheahan.
His uncle is Father Kevin Dillon, an outspoken member of the Catholic Church who was vocally against the way the church handled child sex abuse cases, and was highly respected in the Geelong region after serving the area for 17 years from 2000, becoming a close friend with former Cats president Frank Costa among other football club high-flyers.
And his other uncle, Brendan, has served as chaplain to the Melbourne racing fraternity for years, blessing tracks and jockeys before big races in the name of the church.
In many ways, Dillon’s appointment is the oldest of old schools.
Should you wipe the specific names from the files and treat the above as only characters in a play, it’s an appointment that would make just as much sense at a rural footy club somewhere in the backwoods of Victoria as it does in the glittering halls of AFL House.
Sport. Religion. Family. Connections.
It doesn’t mean Dillon isn’t the right person for the job. But the journey he has taken to get there has been played out time and again in history, and it has certainly been a smoother path than many other hopefuls have had to tread in their bids for the gig.
Risk aversion and looking to the future
Many pundits saw this as the AFL’s opportunity to finally see one of several talented and innovative women step up to the plate.
Kylie Watson-Wheeler and Kylie Rogers both came to the interview room with strong CVs and the backing of important Aussie Rules figures.
In club land, Watson-Wheeler has been a brilliant addition to the Western Bulldogs, having thrived in the cut and thrust boardrooms of the likes of Coca-Cola and Disney.
Meanwhile, Rogers has impressed as an innovator at the AFL, a risk taker with big ideas and big ambitions — and possibly a perfect foil for the straight-down-the-line, letters-and-numbers approach that Dillon is sure to provide.
While the AFL ultimately decided to stick with a male CEO, its decision to give former North Melbourne high-flyer and Melbourne University player Laura Kane a shot at backfilling Dillon’s role shows a tentative but promising investment in the future.
When McLachlan stood down last year, he said that the next person in line would be “completely different” from him.
“What I do feel absolutely certain about [is] that whoever replaces me will be completely different,” he said.
“They will have to bring their own style and be their own person, man or woman.”
Andrew Dillon will be different in that every person in the world operates in their own unique way.
He probably won’t have the same charisma as McLachlan, or the marketing prowess.
But overall, you can expect things to stay very much the same in the short term.
With some stormy seas still ahead in the AFL journey, Dillon will provide a steady set of hands at the wheel, taking few risks as he sets his gaze firmly on the safety of the horizon.
It might not have been a decision much of the Aussie Rules world wanted. But it is surely one that the AFL needed right now.
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