Sizer the ideal replacement for McGuire – The Age

As cringingly bad as McGuires pride line was at the press conference last week, Sizer emerged as a balanced and intelligent voice of the club.

A criticism of Collingwood, even noted in the report, is that they have been more about image protection and spin than substance. The appointment of Sizer could - and doubtlessly would in some quarters - be challenged as being more brand protection and spin and not about meaningful change. It would be derided as tokenism. Something similar was said of Peggy ONeal at Richmond.

The criticism would be similarly misplaced.

Image and perception are often reality. The reality now is the perception of Collingwood as a systemically racist club.The reality is the report also found no incident in the recent past and the club, with Sizer on the board and new programs implemented, has been trying to make meaningful change.

The board will meet in coming days to discuss McGuires replacement and the two most likely candidates will be vice-president Mark Korda and Murphy.

Korda is hurt by the fact that after McGuire, he and Alex Waislitz are the longest-serving board members and so are more closely aligned with the period of history the report most scathingly dealt with.

Murphy has been the understated change agent at the club. He undertook the review of all operations in 2017 that ushered in fundamental football and administrative change. He was also one of the key drivers, with Sizer, of the need to commission the Do Better report. He is respected and very popular internally across the club.

Jodie Sizer. Credit:Joe Armao

McGuire arrived at Collingwood to repair a broke and failing club. He became the club.

When McGuire walked in the door at Collingwood, so too did sponsors. He was the young, enthusiastic face of a suddenly progressive club, who, through his popular TV role, could give those sponsors the eyeballs they craved. They wanted to attach themselves to McGuire as much as Collingwood.

As he walks out the door now it is partly because sponsors are now worried about attaching themselves to him and his club.

Their jumper sponsor, CGU will part at the end of the year and not renew. Holden has not renewed its naming rights of the club and no one has rushed to fill the breach. COVID is a significant factor in a competitive market but the existing sponsors, McGuire acknowledged in his leaving statement, were suffering the pain of association with Collingwood at the moment.

McGuire did a lot of good at Collingwood that should not be ignored and in fact could not be ignored as he ran through the impressive list of achievements and social good the club has done in his time. But by staying, he was getting in the way of the very thing he was trying to do.

He stayed too long. As simple as that. The release of the report and its damning critique of a long period of his presidency made those achievements harder to remember.

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For someone so attuned to media, he lacked a self-awareness to appreciate that his time had passed until it was long past. He should have gone after the King Kong comment but stayed, believing he could ride it out because he was still doing more good than harm at Collingwood.

But as those years passed Collingwood was doing more good for McGuires reputation than he was doing for Collingwoods.

Now he leaves and it is a new Collingwood without McGuire as president. The New Magpies as it were.

As it was when he arrived at a dilapidated Victoria Park, it is time for progressive cultural change.

The Do Better report notes: Change needs to be driven from the top if it is to address racism and set the tone for the culture within the club. Making Sizer president or at least vice-president to Murphy - would set a new tone.

Michael Gleeson is an award-winning senior sports writer specialising in AFL and athletics.

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Sizer the ideal replacement for McGuire - The Age