Harley is still the Top Cat

BRAD GREENSHIELDS: When you retired after the 2009 grand final did you see yourself being the General Manager of AFL (NSW/ACT)?

TOM HARLEY: Probably not.

It's one of those things where I think if you go back any period of time in your life it's really hard to forecast.

I think if I was at school I never would've thought I would've got drafted in the first place. Then once I was at Port Adelaide I never thought I'd end up playing at Geelong, I never thought I'd end up playing in premierships and certainly never thought I'd end up living in Sydney and marrying a Sydney woman.

So you never really know but I moved up to Sydney two and a half years ago and just had a real passion and thirst for the game and some real opportunities opened up through the AFL and I just really enjoyed it.

 

BG: When you first moved to Sydneyyou had a role with establishing Greater Western Sydney. What was the allure of being general manager rather than being at a football club?

TH: I was with the Giants 18 months ago when the Giants were still a project of the AFL.

They were a campaign team, GWS they were called and I was employed by the AFL on a consultancy basis and to be honest when they moved over to become the Giants and they got their colours, they became the GWS Giants, I still felt emotionally connected to the Geelong Football Club and wasn't ready to move on from that.

The opportunity to stay involved in the AFL through a role in planning operations came up and then moved into the general manager's role in about July last year.

I think club environments are great, there's no doubt about it but at the end of the day we get involved in all sorts of things from participation to facilities to community engagement yet the one thing that all of those departments have in common is football.

I'm a football person that really enjoys that cut-throat nature of week-to-week competition.

I don't get that at the moment. I'm a fan now and get to watch a lot footy which is a good thing. 

 

BG: When you captain of Geelong, the club was a fine exponent of using the Leading Teams methodology when it came to leadership and communication. What football lessons do you now bring into the business world?

TH: A hell of a lot. What I've learned through study and also just experience, being obviously extensive experience in the sporting environment and developing experience in the business/commercial sense is that the fundamentals of what makes a really good team are exactly the same.

We've gone through a pretty significant period of change at AFL (NSW/ACT) around restructures and setting up the way we want to do things and certainly the experience gained from time at Geelong and learning from really great people, I've taken a lot from that.

Also I think the AFL as an organisation has some unbelievable people working in it.

When you're talking about the sports industry it's not untrue to say that the AFL is world's best practice in a lot areas and from a club point of view Geelong was world's best practice also and I feel really privileged to have been involved in both.

BG: Do you find that staff respond well to those sort of practices?

TH: Yeah I think so.

If you set up a framework which is values based, behaviour based and rewarding the right sort of behaviour while focussing on the behaviour and not as intrinsically on the outcome and getting the right people in the right projects, you can't really go wrong.

We've made a commitment at AFL (NSW/ACT) to invest in good people. We just had a breakfast this morning (Thursday) with the Northern NSW development team where we've got four full-time staff and 12 casuals.

Some of the casuals, they're kids ranging from 16 to 19 and just really good kids. If we can skill them up, at the very least they'll be advocates of the game but hopefully they become future leaders for the code in the region and that's part of our responsibility.

 

BG: You said you're still a Geelongperson at heart. On grand final day when the Cats kicked away in the last quarter did you wish you were still playing?

TH: No I didn't.

I watched the game and really enjoyed it.

I went down to the rooms afterwards with the guys and I was with Steven King who was a teammate in 2007 who at the time of the grand final was a St Kilda assistant coach.

We both had a conversation along the lines of you're never going to replicate the feeling of actually playing in a premiership but actually being there and being so far removed from the point that you know you can't play because I'd retired and 'Kingy' had retired and Darren Milburn and Cameron Mooney, our contempories weren't playing, you could just really enjoy it.

It was a phenomenal effort and again put a ruber stamp on the class of the whole club.

I think everyone identifies with the skill of the football team but the actual club, to manage the list that well and to retain the players to give them the best opportunity to perform at the right team of the year was outstanding.

I think what I get a lot of pride out of when it comes to the Geelong Footy Club is the level of respect that the rest of the competition has for a side that has won 90% of its games in five years.

And it's without a hint of arrogance in my view, the way they've gone about it and that's the mark of a great team.

 

BG: Can the Giants become that great team?

TH: I've kept a really close eye on their development and the way that they've actually constructed their list is really impressive.

They've gone for the uncontracted players in that 20 to 23 age bracket in Scully, Davis, Ward and Palmer then there's the 32 year-olds such as Chad Cornes, Dean Brogan, Luke Power and James McDonald from Melbourne so you've got some really good experienced players.

Then there's the gamut of kids which is just amazing. The challenge is obviously going to be to hold on to those kids. They've invested significantly in welfare so when the time does come that the players are able to make an educated and informed decision on whether they want to stay, they do. That's the challenge for the club.

If they can maintain their list, they'll be a good side.

 

BG: Is talk of a premiership within five years for the Giants realistic?

TH: To put times and dates on premierships is futile I think because a lot of things have to go right but they'll certainly have the talent to really challenge.

 

BG: That's on-field but off-field, putting on your GM's hat, what is the challenge to get 30,000 or 40,000 people to want to go to the footy in West Sydney every second week?

TH: If we talk about the Swans for a sec, they're NSW's largest sporting club in every measurement.

Whether it be sponsorship dollars, attendance at games, membership and the like, they're right up there. The Swans have been carrying the can for 30 years so I think there's going to be that natural growth of the football public in Sydney but to expect that straight off the bat is like expecting the actual team to play in the finals in their first year.

I think patience has to play a key part but I'm very confident in the fact that they're setting up the club extremely well.

They've got strong administration now with the CEO David Matthews and Kevin Sheedy on the coaching panel with Mark Williams and Graeme Allan has done a great job in constructing a more than competitive list for the future and Tony Shepherd who heads up the board is a big player  in the Sydney market in a commercial sense.

The 30 or 40,000 people to a game is the unknown but the thing about their Skoda Stadium home ground at the Showgrounds is it's a boutique stadium, a 20 to 25,000 seat stadium and the mentality for the Giants should be to build a fortress there.

I'd love nothing more than to see the 'sold out'sign outside the ground because there's 25,000 people there than necessarily see 22,000 at ANZ Stadium.

It's a long term investment and it's going to be an exciting one.