Craig Kelly could hardly have enjoyed a better start to his second tenure at Collingwood.
The new Magpies CEO – who was appointed earlier this year as Mark Anderson’s successor – has his organisation thriving, on and off the field.
Jack Ginnivan’s illicit drug indiscretion has been the only negative press the Magpies have received in months, while the club has cemented itself as premiership favourites with a 3-0 start to the season.
A club insider has suggested to SEN’s Andy Maher that Kelly has had a direct influence on the club humming so early in his tenure.
“I was talking to a reasonably senior employee of the footy club last Saturday at the MCG, they were saying Craig Kelly has been like a fresh of fresh air,” Maher told AFL Nation.
“His constant energy, constant positivity, the mood that he creates on a Monday-Friday work environment at Collingwood is unlike anything they’ve seen since they’ve been there, certainly in the last five to ten years.
“When you’ve got the footy going well.. and then you’ve got the front office and the person most responsible for that bringing that positivity to the joint… (it’s a club that’s thriving).”
Kelly’s tenure is particularly important after recent instability at the top of Collingwood. Former president Eddie McGuire departed the club early in 2021 and Mark Korda could only reprise that role for a matter of months before Jeff Browne stamped his ambitions.
Senior coach Nathan Buckley also walked away in the middle of the 2021 season, but early in 2023 Collingwood clearly has all key pillars of the club working in unison.
Kelly came in at no.16 in the AFL Record’s Ash Browne’s 2023 AFL movers and shapers list and has been suggested to give Collingwood a “competitive advantage” given his history of running sports marketing agency TLA, which manages hundreds of current players.
In one of his only public interviews, Kelly told SEN soon after he was appointed that he hopes to mirror the alignment seen in the most successful current AFL clubs.
“I think well-run joints, there’s a benchmark there. Geelong has done this exceptionally well in the last 12 months,” he stated.
“I personally believe that unless you get it all aligned, unless you look at it and get everyone playing their position like you have in a footy club when you have a successful team, the footy gods don’t give you the end goal that you want.
“I think the Sydney Swans, Geelong, Richmond, they’re benchmarks and we’ve got to want to get to that level across our whole business, not our footy department.”