Did Collingwood president Mark Korda make the right call distancing himself from Nathan Buckley’s departure press conference last week?
Korda was noticeably absent as CEO Mark Anderson and football boss Graham Wright flanked Buckley for the enormous announcement over Zoom.
On this week’s edition of The Sounding Board podcast, Damian Barrett and Craig Hutchison discussed the decision.
Barrett was critical of Korda’s absence, given how present he was following the Queen’s Birthday win over Melbourne.
Barrett: “What did you make of the president who wasn’t at the press conference on the main table, but he was certainly on the ground post-match backslapping and high-fiving and was in the rooms also singing the song. I wasn’t a massive fan of that action from Mark Korda on that particular day,” he said.
Hutchison: “If you can’t be involved in the fun stuff, what are you doing it for?”
Barrett: “Was it fun to him? He’s removed a man who has spent all-but one year of the last 27 from his involvement with the club that week.”
Hutchison: “I reckon you need to be there as the president. It’s a big day win, lose or draw.”
Barrett: “I agree you need to be there because if he’s not there it’s equally a talking point, but do you need to be making sure you’re slapping the back of the bloke you’ve just sacked effectively?”
Hutchison: “You’re judged more if you don’t, I reckon. You can’t win either way. I think you just defer on the side of being there, congratulate on the way past. If he had his arms around him in the song Rob Lowe style, I’d have had a problem, but I don’t reckon it got to that point so I think he got the right balance of being present, but not over the top.”
Hutchison and Barrett went on to discuss Collingwood’s media strategies ahead of the upcoming EGM and how they should have handled the last few weeks.
Listen to this week’s Sounding Board podcast below