Lives in Cricket No 12 - Ric Charlesworth

insights.’ But ‘the unfortunate thing was my job was to challenge them and ask why things were done a particular way.’ Nevertheless he did win over Drum. ‘Initially, the very first time I heard Charlesworth might be involved,’ he said, ‘I must admit I felt mediocre about it.’ But he soon warmed to his presence. ‘Knowing the actual content of the game,’ said Drum, ‘didn’t matter so much because with coaching there’s so much more. Coaching is about how you handle the 25 people around you looking to you for guidance.’ Ric proved to be ‘fantastic’: ‘What people think of Ric Charlesworth is one thing … he actually is quite humble. He actually is very smart and very tough and I was really appreciative of those qualities.’ Some of Drum’s faith in Ric was misplaced. It was true he went to the board of the club to advise against a move to summarily sack the coach. But he did so only because he thought it was pointless and unnecessarily expensive to do so right at the start of a new season, a message that the board ignored: ‘Damian was a very likeable fellow and we were starting to get a productive relationship. He was fighting for his life right from the beginning of the season. I only got there in January and by April he was gone.’ Ric had left national hockey to join a much more ruthless football environment, in which the top AFL players earned up to $A750,000 a year. Whatever his qualities as a coach, Drum’s misfortune was to be supported by the club chairman, Ross McLean, while the chief executive officer, Hatt, wanted to sack him. ‘He was right,’ said Charlesworth, ‘I don’t think Damian Drum was the goods as coach but he couldn’t get rid of him because of McLean. McLean as chairman and David as CEO was never going to work.’ It was ‘a lifelong antagonism … David had been my campaign manager [in his successful bid to enter parliament in 1983] and we worked very hard to overthrow him [McLean, the incumbent MP] and then they made him the chairman of the Football Club David was managing!’ ‘David Hatt is a very good friend of mine,’ he said soon after Drum’s demise. ‘I know David very well and I know how Machiavellian he can be. He’s a political operator, don’t worry about that.’ Charlesworth had no misgivings about involvement with a different sport, albeit one he had followed since he was a child. There were ‘generic principles’ involved in coaching, regardless of the technical details. ‘I don’t care what the sport is, those 76 1993-2002