While Eddie McGuire is clearly the
outstanding example of an AFL club official mixing his role with media
duties – or more precisely, the other way around in his case – Jeff
Kennett as president-in-waiting at Hawthorn FC, has directly challenged
the whole question of this conflicting duality.

Kennett clearly
has some old political scores to settle with McGuire that go beyond the
football and media worlds and even extend to their personal brands of
politics – the Magpies president is a high profile ALP supporter who
has clearly locked horns with the former Victorian Liberal Premier in
the past. So now that Kennett has McGuire, and particularly Nine’s Footy Show in
his gun sights, how much of his spiel about conflicts of interest is
motivated by genuine concern for his club’s welfare, and how much is a
spot of good old fashioned revenge?

High-profile media pundits
and current Hawthorn board members Dermott Brereton and Jason Dunstall
(Foxtel) will find out soon enough, because – according to the now
long-standing Kennett dictate – he’s of the view that Brereton and even
current players like Shane Crawford and Peter Everitt can’t serve two
masters. In fact in Kennett’s eyes, The Footy Show is essentially a publicity machine for Collingwood and president McGuire.

“You can’t take Collingwood out of the host and you can’t take The Footy Show
out of the Collingwood president,” Kennett observed after he attended a
meeting called by McGuire and Nine to try and resolve their differences
last Friday. “So you have got a conflict of interest. Whatever is good
for The Footy Show is good for Collingwood and vice versa. So I
am not going to allow myself to provide the talent that is going to add
to the value of that brand.”

Crikey! What to make over this
fascinating stand-off looming between a one-time premier and
heavyweight head kicker and the media man who backs Bracks. For the
full background to this sumo-sized stoush you can read the complete
article here,
including some interesting recycling of past history relating to Nine’s
recent umpires controversialist – reporter Tony Jones – and his run-in
with a very unhappy team at Hawthorn.