Brian Cook in the studio | Former AFL clubland CEO & recent interim chief executive at Melbourne (16.09.26)
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Who is Brian Cook and why did he return from retirement to lead Melbourne?
This is your town. This is your
station. This is Waitley.
I had this in the diary for most of the year after forty years or more than forty years in footy and the vast majority as a club chief executive. Let's get Brian Cook into the studio to talk about reflections of what has been and then particularly what comes next for our footy industry. And then he went out of retirement and took another CEO's job. So I had to wait for him to retire for a third time, but here he is in the studio. Brian Cook, it's great.
Great to see you. Welcome. Thanks, Jared. It's it's great to eventually uh get here. I've come down from Torquay today and uh I hope the next hour is worthwhile to all of us. Will this retirement take cookie?
You'll get tapped on the shoulder over and over.
No, I'm not sure about that now. I think uh that's four clubs now for me and uh more recently Melbourne for for s a couple of months. Um, you know, it's footy's been good to me. Uh I've loved footy. Uh you know, I it's it's a great game. It uh it teaches young people how to win or lose, you know, how to how to show humility, you know, to be resilient. Um team first philosophies. You know, I I just I just love it. Um, I love all those values. Uh they really hit a sweet spot for me and I and I've been privileged really. Uh uh and I'm grateful for it that I've been in this industry for so long.
Footy might have been good to you, but you've been good for footy and I want to explore that a little bit. So it's thirty-six years since you were appointed the chief executive of West Coast.
Yeah, in nineteen ninety, the start of nineteen ninety I was appointed uh CEO of the West Coast. Before that I was chief executive of the West Australian Footy Commission for uh some years, two or three years. And uh that was the body that uh owned the license t for the West Coast Eagles to participate in the AFL. And um uh that was an interesting time. Um it was the first uh f it mightn't have been the first But it was certainly one of the early attempts at privatization, so to speak, or at least being publicly listed as a public company, um, which was interesting. Uh c they you know, the shares were a dollar fifty, they had s un unsecured note holders. They raised around about twelve million dollars in the first uh
first year or so of um of going on the board. Um the shareholder board anyway, the uh stock market anyway, um they managed to the West Coast Eagles managed to uh use all of that money in the first couple of years because of the license fees and transfer fees at the time and and uh and uh donations for want of a better word. It's probably not a good word, but uh uh certainly giving some dollars to each of the W A FL clubs, you know. So in the end they used all of that twelve million dollars. Um which made it really uh really interesting. And so the the there had to be this rearrangement of the licence conditions to ensure there wasn't the burden of expenditures. um that went to the commission from from the Eagles or IPL.
Anyway, I don't want to get too complicated about this. Um but once we appointed Michael Molthouse in uh and he was appointed six weeks before I was. Yep. Okay. Um he was appointed and he he knew about Victorian football back to front, changed the squad, changed the way they played. And uh to a large degree was a bit of a saviour. Um and certainly if someone said to me, What are the you know, handful of major decisions that you've been involved in um as a CEO, that would have to be one of those top five in my forty years. The appointment of Michael Multhouse as a coach.
So West Coast has always been a big club.
How did Brian Cook shape the West Coast Eagles during the early 1990s privatization?
But I was curious mm from where we were thirty six years ago to where we are now, just in terms of scale as to how big clubs are, how big the competition has become. What's your perspective of that?
Yeah, no, there's no doubt the scale's unbelievable. Um I knew y I can refer to many things. I remember the West Coast Higgles were were were were turning over um you know uh Around four million dollars a year. Uh now it's over a hundred million.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
Who is Brian Cook and why did he return from retirement to lead Melbourne?
0:00–3:32
2
How did Brian Cook shape the West Coast Eagles during the early 1990s privatization?
3:32–6:54
3
What major changes did he see in club size, revenue and staffing from West Coast to Carlton?
6:54–10:19
4
How has the role of a club chief executive evolved over his four CEO stints?
10:19–14:06
5
Why does he believe accountability must be matched with support for staff and coaches?
14:06–17:43
6
What are the biggest integrity and commercial challenges facing the AFL today?
17:43–21:35
7
How does he view the AFL’s future – expansion, concussion, gambling and competition format?
21:35–24:55
8
What advice does Brian Cook give for developing the next generation of football CEOs?
24:55–27:32
Speakers
1 identifiedMore from Whateley
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