Giving a club Director the job of GM of Football with very little direct experience under his belt doesn’t sit well from a process point, and Peter Bell doesn’t seem like the type of guy I’d get on with. Certainly, his taste in bars is appalling, so he loses huge points with me on that front.
But for whatever reason, he’s a bloke that people seem to trust. He was entrusted Freo’s captaincy and handed it over the Pav at the right time. The AFL players voted him the president of AFL Players’ Association and chairman of the AFL Players’ Trust. The members put him on the Freo Board. The ABC put him on the radio. Foxtel put him on the TV. It seems like every job he goes for he gets.
If Rosich or the Board is guilty of anything, it’s of being as taken with him as everyone else in the football industry.
The criticism about process only holds if there were better candidates available. I don’t know whether the other interviews were a sham, or whether those candidates were any good, or whether they cast the net wide enough, but as far as I can tell no-one on here does. The other option was to promote from within, but most on here didn’t rate the job Lloyd had done, so I’m not sure if that was even an option.
As to your suggestions yeti, Sanderson and Ratten seem like decent blokes, but most coaches want to coach. Sanderson is a lead assistant in a team that’s in the GF, Ratten is at the Hawks. I can’t see either leaving their high-profile coaching jobs to come to Fremantle as GM.
You might be able to get Chocko I suppose, seeing as last I heard he had been sacked by a B-grade team in Melbourne. But it’s telling that no other club has picked him up in any capacity. If the argument is that Bell doesn’t have football management experience, I’m not sure Chocko is any better in that regard.
I’d much prefer Bell than any of those blokes.
