Continuing our regular series, Western Bulldogs president Peter Gordon writes exclusively for Star Weekly.
God, I hate losing.
And while Brisbane played well at the weekend, I’m sick to death of acknowledging the improvement of our competitors. We are not in this competition to make up the bloody numbers. We have to lift.
We all have to try harder and get better, from the president down. Nothing is more important than winning games of footy.
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Here are my other messages to you.
1. We will expect maximum effort and competency from every director and employee of this club to help us to lift … players, coaches, physios, weight coaches, you name it.
2. Some so-called supporters have the nerve to write to me complaining about effort by the team when they haven’t even renewed their membership or, having renewed it, haven’t honoured their payments obligations. To those so-called members and supporters, to quote Elvis … “Clean up your own backyard before you come lecturing me”.
3. Some other so-called experts write that these kind of performances mean we will soon be out of existence. Time for a reality check! We will make a profit this year. We’ll have paid down $2 million off club debt by season’s end. We’ve cemented an historic equalisation agreement with the AFL which provides us with better financial security and opportunity than we have ever had. Our membership will be in the top three in our AFL history, even with three years of indifferent on-field performances. We’ve cleared years of roadblocks to our $30 million Edgewater facility and it opens early next year. If that sounds to you like an organisation going out of existence, time to go back to business school.
4. I’m proud of all those things. But if anyone thinks any of us is happy to see us puddle along with a 20-something per cent win-loss ratio, they don’t know me and they don’t know us. We will get better.
