Interview: Eddie McGuire - The Tim Lane Interview - 20th September 2003
(Credit: The Age / Fairfax)

Through the football season, does football become the consuming passion?

EM: It's all there. The footy's everywhere because there's so much involved in calling the matches and doing The Footy Show and all those types of things. This year in particular was an interesting one because I had the Allan Border Medal at the start of the year, the Logies, the National Driving Test, the Friday Night Football, and The Footy Show.

But privately it's been fantastic. My two little boys are going well. We had a little baby born in December last year so that was a fantastic Christmas and New Year period, and the little fellow, who is two-and-ahalf now, is just going great guns and is an absolute joy. One of the highlights of the year for me was last Sunday when I went down to the Port Melbourne ground and took my two-and-a-half-year-old with me. In a lot of ways, the reason I got involved at Collingwood, I thought at the time it would be a tragedy in five or 10 years' time, if I had a little boy, and the Pies weren't there or weren't strong. So to actually go down and see Williamstown win the preliminary final against Port Melbourne, in an old grandstand, with a two-and-a-half-year-old in his Collingwood jumper sitting on my knee and clapping when we kicked goals, was fantastic.

You've said your flexible hours give you sufficient time for family. You're able to maintain that?

EM: Yeah, absolutely. I've got a fantastic wife who fits everything in to try and do that. Today (Thursday) for example, or Friday if I'm calling games, I try to make sure that I've got the mornings to spend and then get home, as much as possible, to read the books and have the bath and have a bit of a play. It's very important to me. I think it was the difference in my childhood that my father and mother were always there for football games and you always had that parental support and advice and guidance and love. Like everybody else, that's the main thing in everyone's life and everything else fits around it.

Is that to say you can "up" your current rate of work?

EM: I don't know. It's an interesting one. I still think there's plenty more left in me as far as new projects and getting stuck into things.

So do you think one day you may need a major change of direction to keep your batteries charged?

EM: Over the years I've always looked at those things. You know, when you're 10 you dream of when you're 20, when you're 20 you dream of when you're 30 and so on. But I must admit I'm enjoying family, enjoying my career, and certainly enjoying Collingwood more than any time in my life. It's a great period at the moment. I'm pretty satisfied the way things are going, but certainly trying to develop new things.

Whether it meant trying to get out of the media altogether and going and doing something else, that's not on the radar at the moment. The media is obviously still what I do for a living and I need to do that for a while yet. Similarly, I've still got another year to run on the pledge I made to the Collingwood members, so I'll certainly be there as long as that year.

Politics is the one people keep pointing towards.Could you possibly see yourself in federal politics?

EM: I could see myself doing it.

Probably the answer at the moment is no. I think the pressure on the family is enormous and I'm just not sure that I'm prepared to put in danger the well-being of my family for politics. However, I think I'm looking more and more at trying to do things without getting into politics.

Surprisingly to some people, being at Collingwood gives you an opportunity to do a lot of things that even politicians can't and that's why we've really gone out of our way to become the number one philanthropic club in Australian sport and become a leader. So we can actually make an impact in society and we're able to do that without going through all the party politics and the nonsense. I don't know whether I'd have the patience or the temperament for all the back-room lobbying and the time spent on the back bench to make an impact.

Inevitably you have to fend off accusations of being a power addict. Is the philanthropic idea something that perhaps helps you deal with that, both within yourself and publicly?

EM: It's actually the reason why you do it. I think the notion of celebrity these days, and the notion of leadership, has swung around from people trying to make a contribution to society to people always having the view, after the '80s probably, that anybody doing this is only doing it for themselves.

But without wanting to sound like Mother Teresa or St Vincent de Paul, you actually do these things because you want to contribute.

Was there a moment when this ambition had its dawning?

EM: Whenever I think of an idea for anything we do at Collingwood, I really think of it from the position of being a fan or a young kid. Every week when I drive to the football, it sounds silly, but I almost get a tear in my eye when I drive around past the Richmond Station into Brunton Avenue, and see all these little kids walking around in their Collingwood jumper holding their dad's hand. That was still to me the seminal moment in my life, when I got off the train at Victoria Park station with my dad for the first time and walked into Collingwood. The impact that made on me still resonates to this day. It's very important that you take into account what the people who fill the stands are thinking. I trawl the websites every second day, just looking at what people are saying . . . If it becomes too corporate, too commercial, you lose the essence of why the corporate and commercial people wanted to get involved in the first place.

Are they all happy with you? Was there any objection when you indicated you wanted to vet the message on the run-through?

EM: No, that's fine, there's no problem with that at all. I think they've seen what we've actually tried to achieve and there's constant communication between the cheer squads and the supporter groups and the club, and we do respond to them. Given the size and the nature of our club, I think most people are pretty satisfied with it at the moment. There's always going to be people who either perceive me as being something I'm not or just don't like who I am.

Are you an autocratic president?

EM: I don't think there's any doubt that I'm pretty autocratic in the way I operate, not only at club level but in the things I do. Probably autocratic in making decisions, but very consultative in getting to that decision. Greg Swann (chief executive) makes more decisions at the club than I do, by a long way. But when it comes to making a decision, we don't have subcommittees or anything. We make the decision.

Have you considered John Elliott's fall, and pondered whether it's a lesson about unrestrained hubris?

EM: Absolutely. I think the trick is to remember you're only there as part of the club. It's not your club, you don't own it, it belongs to a hundred years of people who have been there before you and hopefully a hundred years going forward. It's the old saying: `You're a custodian for the time you're there'. There's always a worry with volunteers at clubs that in the end, they believe the club owes them and I hope I'm out long before that. As long as I feel it's an honour and a privilege and I still get the goose bumps driving into Victoria Park every time, which I still do, then I don't think that'll be a problem. When you say autocratic, one of the first things I said to Neil Balme when he came to Collingwood was: `Balmey, you've been around footy clubs for a long, long time. One of your main jobs is to pull me up whenever you think I need to be pulled up.'

Coaches and presidents don't always get on. Have the coach and the president ever given each other the steely-eyed stare?

EM: No. I've got enormous respect for Mick. We have a tremendous friendship. It's good, though, because there's an age difference between us: Christi's (Malthouse's daughter) a colleague of mine and not that much younger than me. She'd hate to hear that . . . she is a bit younger than me, I suppose. Mick and Nanette are very good friends of ours. We love each other's company but we don't mix every day of the week and I think that helps.

You have admitted that the early period as president wasn't easy and that you even questioned whether you had `it'. How long did it take to get over the hump and what happened?

EM: The first six months was a blur. I was only 33 and still hadn't broken the back of my career at that stage. Every Footy Show was still causing us plenty of trepidation. I think it was the extra work that was involved and moving into an area where the people were already there as opposed to setting up your own team and really fixing it up. I remember one night my wife and I, after we'd been flogged, went to dinner . . . coming home from the MCG. We ordered up the french onion soup and that went cold . . . we had the butcher's paper on the table, I pulled my pen out and structured up the club the way that I thought a football club would run if I started from scratch . . . The loneliest moment I've ever had in my life was the night I was voted on as president, which was on my birthday. We were down at the Camberwell Civic Centre, there was a standing ovation, everyone's singing the song and all the rest of it, and my fellow board members all linked arms and were singing the song, and I looked out and realised: `Jeez, this is up to me.'

And now it's all going well there and at work, but Nine don't have the finals. Is that a continuing source of frustration?

EM: It is and it isn't. Because I know that if we had the opportunity to get the finals, we probably wouldn't have had the home-and-away . . . I joked at the time it was all part of my plan so I could have the finals off to watch Collingwood and so far, so good (laughs) . . . I'd hate to have the decision of calling Collingwood games in finals matches. That might drive everyone completely mad.

So what's the difference?

EM: There's probably no difference, but I'm just talking about the intensity of it all. It's probably a good thing that I don't have to face either that ordeal or question. Having said that, we'd love to have it at Channel Nine and I'd love to be involved in it.

Would you like to be calling Saturday's game?

EM: No. I'm probably glad I'm not.

For your sake?

EM: I think for everyone's sake.

So there is a certain threshold on the issue?

EM: No, look, I'm always careful. The last thing I ever want to do is to detract from people's enjoyment of the game and that's not even taking into account my enjoyment. As long as I know I'm calling the game fairly and accurately and not being stupid or one-eyed or anything, then I'm happy with that. If I felt that I'd gone over the edge, and there's probably been one occasion that you could really throw up, that was probably the Port Adelaide game last year. But I think this year, I've called the Collingwood games pretty well and I don't think anyone would have any complaints with them. And there haven't been. There were no complaints in, for example, the Essendon game, and I was able to relax a bit and put in a few comments regarding my feelings. I think I said in the third quarter, `This is killing me', or something, and that was seen more as reflection and commentary of the whole atmosphere of the game. So I think I've got through that.

Do you reflect on all the public exchanges, the skirmishes that occur and so on, and ever come to the conclusion, `I was wrong'?

EM: Yeah, oh yeah, all the time. I don't like having arguments with people, which would come as a shock to a lot of people. In my mind, I don't have any enemies from me to them, whether people think that of me is up to them . . . You can have skirmishes and fights and blues and things and it's always important, and it's always been my upbringing, to make sure you stand up for yourself and while you might not throw the first one, it's always important to throw the last one. But there are times when you do things that you think are right at the time that on reflection are wrong and there are other times when you know you're right and everyone else says you're wrong, but you know you're right and ultimately you're proven to be. If you really believe in your heart that you're doing it for the right reasons, then that's the test. With the scrutiny that I've been under, and I invite the scrutiny because it's good, it keeps everybody honest . . . There's probably 300 websites that monitor every second word that I say, so I'm sure if I step out of line, the world will know about it pretty quickly.

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