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Trevor Nisbett Q&A: West Coast CEO on Eagles’ season so far, Willie Rioli and his future at the club

West Coast’s long-serving CEO Trevor Nisbett sat down with Mark Readings to discuss the Eagles’ season so far, if Willie Rioli will make an AFL return in 2021 and his own future at the club. Mark Readings: Mid-season grade: What sort of grading are you giving the club at this point in the year? Trevor Nisbett: That’s a difficult one. I think we’re probably in the B/B+ category. People will say that might be a bit high but I think with what we’ve endured as a footy club, I think we’ve been pretty good. I mean the guys have got through a pretty tumultuous time with the number of injuries we’ve had. I think the upside is that we’ve been able to play some of the young guys and they’ve done a terrific job. MR: We always talk in the media of premiership windows. Do you feel like you’re still in the conversation for this year and the next couple of years, given the list you’ve got? TN: We probably don’t talk about windows too often, our main aim is obviously to make finals as often as we can and give ourselves a chance. That’s the first aim, to make finals and give ourselves a chance again. We think we’ve got a good enough side to beat most teams in the competition on any given day and a lot will depend on a little bit of luck with the personnel you’ve got available at any one time. But we also think the first half of the year has given ourselves that opportunity to blood some young players and those players, when they get the opportunity later in the year will be rearing and ready to go. MR: A couple of weeks ago there was some doom and gloom about the club. You’d been beaten by Essendon, had an under-strength side going to take on Carlton at the SCG. Do you feel that victory was a turning point in the season? TN: I think you could say that. I mean it was a great challenge for our guys, we hadn’t won at the SCG for 22 years and albeit it was always playing Sydney and we’d only played their nine times, but nine times is still a lot of losses at the one venue. I think the guys responded really well. I think the staff and the players reacted to the loss against Essendon to say ‘OK well, lets get out against Carlton and get the job done’ and they did that and I think that gives you confidence that we’re up and about and we’re ready to go. Of course the guys came back to play Richmond, who are an outstanding outfit, and consequently it was a really good performance last Sunday. MR: COVID took a big hit on finances. Where do you think you’re sitting looking towards the end of this year? TN: We think, at the moment, we’ll attain budget. It’s so problematic because if anything happens at this point in time you have to re-adjust. We’ve been re-adjusting all year with regards to crowds and games. When we lost the Derby, obviously that’s a massive hit for us but in saying that, we’ve got to try and re-group and recoup some of those losses over the coming weeks and hopefully we will continue to get crowds in this State, which will assist us, by the end of the year. MR: Willie’s back at the club in the next couple of days. What does that mean for him and the club? TN: It’s great to have him back. I think it gives Willie and has given Willie some goals. He’s made some mistakes and it’s all been accounted for and we know what’s happened. He understands his situation and now hopefully we can just get him on the track and get him into doing stuff that he really enjoys doing and that is, mainly, playing footy. If we can keep him training and keep him doing the things that he likes doing well hopefully we can keep him here for the longer haul. MR: Is he on his last chance? TN: I don’t think there’s anything such as a last chance. Every issue has to be dealt with on its merits. We will always do that. We’ve always looked at our players and given them as much opportunity as we can until it’s too late and we can’t do anymore. That’s always been our understanding with our player group, and in fact any of our staff and people, that we try to nurture them through difficult times, and sometimes people make mistakes. And if you don’t have that attitude in a sporting environment, there wouldn’t be too many people playing or being involved with the club. MR: Did he come close to being de-listed or did you have his back the whole way through? TN: No, there’s lots of conversations about what’s the appropriate penalty, what’s the appropriate stance that the club should make. We’ve spoken to a number of people externally to get their points of view as well. And fortunately, most people were really positive and in fact, internally, we were extremely positive that we could still help Willie and we still believe that. Some people would say ‘look we’ve given him too many chances’ well we don’t agree with that. We think this is an opportunity to give him a chance to get his life and his football career back in order. MR: Will he play AFL footy this year? Will you give him every chance to play? TN: Yeah, well I think so. He’s got an eight-week block of training coming up, which is like a full pre-season basically. He should be, by that stage, fit and well and ready to play. He may not get a game but certainly he’s a really good player. He’s an A-grade player. If he’s up and about, I’m sure he’ll come into consideration. I mean there’s a lot of people that say he shouldn’t play this year. I think he’s done his time. You know, two years is a long time out of the game and I think, in fairness to Willie, if he’s up and about, he puts his hand up for selection. I think our match committee will have to ponder whether we’ve got all our players in form or whether Willie’s got a place to play but again, he’s still got eight weeks to go. There’s a lot of trust and understanding that he is going to have to re-build with the coaches, with the players, and with the community. He knows he’s got it ahead of him but certainly, from our point of view, we wish him well and hopefully have him back on deck. MR: Josh Kennedy and Shannon Hurn: Do you leave it in their hands if they kick on in 2022? TN: I’ve said to both of them, never put an end date on your career. As soon as you do that, you play to that end date. Neither of them have, so whilst they’re playing great footy, and they both are, they should continue playing. Whether they decide if that’s in their best interests at the end of the year, we’ll talk to them about that and discuss that at length. Obviously, they’re not getting any younger but they’re certainly playing like youngsters. They played super footy on the weekend and both of them are in great touch. MR: Adam Simpson: Will he become longest-serving coach at West Coast? TN: That wouldn’t surprise me. He’s an outstanding coach and he’s done a great job with our group. He’s a long-term coach now in his eighth year and he could be here for a long time. Certainly, I don’t see any reason why he couldn’t be. We’ve committed to him and he’s committed to us, so that’s what it’s all about. We work as a partnership and it’s really good to see someone who works for the football club, not just for the team. He’s going a great job with that. He’s doing a really good job from a club perspective. MR: What needs to change to level the playing field for your WAFL team? TN: I think there’s a few things. I think first of all we need to be able to have some recruiting opportunity, we’re very grateful to have the amateur guys that we’ve got and a couple of country guys. They’ve done a terrific job and they’ve been great for our team. They’ve been terrific. But also, we need to be able to add two or three more experienced players to our list so that we can be competitive each week. And I guess, the other thing, we’d like to play some home games so that we can have some familiarity about how we play and where we play. And there’s probably about two or three other things we need to adjust so that we can be competitive every week. It doesn’t mean we’re going to win every week but it certainly means we’ll be much more competitive that what we are at the moment. MR: But a WAFL side is still preferable to what you had before? TN: Yeah, it is preferable. There’s a number of different scenarios that you could look at if the WAFL are keen to look at those things. I think there’s a number of different hosting or partnership opportunities that could still prevail. But you need a willing partner and you need someone who is prepared to understand that they might have six to eight of our players on a regular basis and some weeks there might be 12 and other weeks there might be three. And that’s a juggling act but if someone’s prepared to do that. Where they play, whether it’s league or reserves, is not an issue really. It’s a matter that they’re all housed at one club and they’re all buying into the culture at that club and they’re understanding what the responsibilities are when you go back and play with that WAFL club because there’s a great history in the WAFL, as we know, and we need people to feel as though they’re part of that environment when they go and play there. MR: You’re part of the DNA at West Coast, is there a finish date for you? TN: I get asked that a lot as I get older. I think the issue for me is the same as the players, I don’t want to put an end date on it at the moment. The directors might put an end date on it for me. But I mean, in the end, I’d like to keep working while I’ve got the passion and I’ve got the energy. I’ll know when I run out of energy, I’ll talk to our chairman and our directors after that. At the moment, we’re on a path. We think we’ve got a pretty good football team, we’ve got a terrific club, we’re got 100,000 members we’re very grateful for. Those people, we saw their support last Sunday, it was unbelievable. And that’s the sort of thing that keeps you energised and keeps you wanting to come to work every day. It’s been a long journey but it’s been a really good one to date. MR: How did you respond to being labelled the “Godfather of WA football”? TN: It’s a difficult one. A lot of guys said to me, ‘you should be taking that as a compliment’ and others said ‘oh we’re worried about you’. I don’t know how to respond to that. It may not have even been referring to me but a lot of people think it was so, I accept that some people might think that. But my theory on footy, I love the game, and I’ve always been involved in the game. If I can help the industry in Western Australia as well as our football club, I’m going to do that. And sometimes you have to make decisions that aren’t popular. And sometimes you make decisions that are very popular. I’m not frightened to make the tough decisions and I think that’s one of the important things of being an administrator in the game. You need to be able to complement the easy decisions with the hard ones. If you can’t make those hard decisions, then it’s pretty tough being an effective administrator, in my view. MR: And you still hate losing? TN: Oh, I hate losing. I don’t think there’s anyone that hates losing more than me. I think you learn to live with the wins and losses because that’s the nature of high-performance games and elite sport. But there’s also the other side of the coin, when you do lose, you need to re-group very quickly in our sport and make sure that we’re ready for the next week. You can dwell on it for too long and if you do that, you’re not going to win too many games of footy. I don’t think there’s anyone at our footy club that likes losing. MR: What’s the most challenging part of footy at the moment? TN: Apart from COVID, which is a juggling act - I think everyone is dealing with COVID-19 at the moment. From day-to-day, even week-to-week, we have changes thrown at us and we have to just adjust to it. That’s been difficult for some people to actually understand, that you’ve got to work harder for less. You’ve got to turn up for things that you really don’t want to be a part of. You have to be there. Games get adjusted from week-to-week and we just have to attend to that. That’s a major issue. I think the changing rules of the game, I’ve never been a great advocate for changing the rules every year, which we seem to be doing at the moment. I think that’s an adjustment the players really didn’t need this year given all the other changes that were happening in their lives. Most seem to have adjusted reasonably well, some more than others, and some clubs are using those adjustments really well. I would think our development of the game has suffered over the last couple of years and I think it’s something that I would like and I think the WA Football Commission are addressing, we would like to address it, that we need to keep developing the game. I think that’s something that’s been missing in the last few years from an AFL perspective, they need to invest a lot more money and resources into developing youth football. Women’s football has taken off and it’s been fantastic and it’s been great for the game and now we probably have to think, well, how are we going to get more young women and young men playing the game? I think that’s a critical part for the future.

The West Australian exclusiveTrevor Nisbett Q&A: West Coast CEO on Eagles’ season so far, Willie Rioli and his future at the club

exclusive
Trevor Nisbett Q&A: West Coast CEO on Eagles’ season so far, Willie Rioli and his future at the club