In the 1950s, when Susan Alberti was a young teenager, the culture of Australian Rules football was the epitome of grassroots sport. The players got the hard knocks on the ground and the fans were right up close, as passionate in their support as they were savage in their criticism. Aussie Rules is a sport renowned for the skill and agility it demands, for its sheer physicality and absence of padding or other protection for players. But the fans are equally tough, with a long history of braving miserable winters to watch a full afternoon of what is a unique and brutal running game with an oddly shaped oval ball.
Despite an ambiguous and ever-changing rulebook, Australia’s national game is defended with fierce pride by a large, loud and powerful proportion of the population. One of its most conspicuous cheerleaders is Gillon McLachlan, CEO of the Australian Football League (AFL). Fully aware of his own bias, he enthuses that ‘Aussie Rules is, to me, the best game in the world because it has a unique blend of athleticism, strength, hand–eye coordination and physicality. There is the opportunity for anyone to play regardless of gender or body shape. That means it’s accessible to all and a complete test of an individual’. Gillon also recognises the strong links across Australia between footy and local communities, which enjoy significant economic and social returns from their support of the game. Yet he suspects that, internationally, people probably think it’s a bit crazy, ‘given the amount you run, the huge fields, the big crowds. It’s all part of the extraordinary aptitudes and attitudes of Australians’.
Back in the days of the Victorian Football League (VFL), the main competition up until professional footy officially went national in 1990, the environment for fans in the stands was fairly basic: simple wooden bench seating, or standing room only in what was known as the ‘outer’—which is still the case today at regional and suburban games. People of all shapes, sizes, types and timbres united there on game day. Tragically one-eyed in their support and single-minded in showing their dedication, twenty or thirty passionate diehards would stand behind the goals wielding coloured streamers on a stick, known as ‘floggers’, throughout the play. And a hard core of supporters made up each team’s cheer squad, typically a motley collection of fabulously fanatical folk.
Warmly welcomed into this chaotic and slightly crazed environment as young kids, Sue and Richard spent their Saturdays cheering with the best of them. Jack Jenkings would drop off his children at the Western Oval in the working-class suburb of Footscray, in Melbourne’s west, and leave them in the caring hands of the cheer squad for the whole day. Jack would then head off in his Volkswagen Beetle to his job walking the beat as the local policeman, or if it was his day off, to do voluntary work at an outlet of the charity St Vincent de Paul. Meanwhile, Richard and Sue would make confetti from old phone books and help create banners and floggers. The siblings would support the Footscray Bulldogs players in every game—from the mid-morning under-19s and the reserves through to the main event, the seniors, in the mid- to late afternoon—and in-between would kick a footy themselves.
Sue remembers herself as a seven-year-old, bright as a button and full of charm: ‘I was quite naughty. I used to get up to mischief as a child’. Her eyebrows twitch and her eyes twinkle when she adds: ‘I nearly set fire to the place once, at the football ground. I found some matches, saw some streamers and thought, “I wonder if these will burn”. The streamers were just lying on the ground where someone had left them, so I put a match to them. They did burn. It turned into quite a big fire and I got a bit scared. I could have burned the place down!’ She grins then cringes slightly at the memory of her father’s wrath: ‘I was in so much trouble. So-oo much trouble. Dad was absolutely furious with me. I got banned’. Rolling her eyes skyward and shaking her head, she repeats herself: ‘Ooh did I get in trouble! I never touched matches again’.
From the outset, Sue joined the boys in the games played at half-time in the VFL matches: ‘I played as part of the Footscray cheer squad team and used to dream of running onto the MCG in the red, white and blue. I loved my footy and joined in with my brother. I was a ruck-rover and Dad used to think I was pretty good. I was a tough tackler—I was never a fast runner but I could tackle anyone to the ground!’
Sue loved the rough physicality of the game and the fierceness of the playing group: ‘We were a pretty determined group. These are people who do an enormous amount of work every week for the club. They are all incredibly committed to the sport. I loved the team spirit of it all and the sense of belonging. As a kid it was such fun to just run and run, play with your mates and not worry about too many rules. The style of Aussie Rules is so free and it’s a tough game’. This was confirmed by a woman who approached Sue more than fifty years later at the local ground, by this time known as the Victoria University Whitten Oval. She said to Sue, ‘I remember playing against you. You broke my arm!’
When Sue was fifteen, Jack Jenkings decided the game was getting too rough for his girl and insisted she stop playing football. ‘That was the early 1960s’, notes Richard. ‘There were no girls’ teams, so she had no opportunity to partake in a team.’ Heartbroken, Sue hung up her boots. It was the hardest knock imaginable for a tough little rover. But despite being unable to participate, Sue’s love of football and passion for her beloved Footscray Bulldogs never waned. Through the Melbourne winters, year after year, she continued to go to the games.
By the late 1980s, Aussie Rules had become a national powerhouse, upending the game’s grassroots foundations. In the early 1990s when, as the newly endorsed AFL, it turned its attention to television rights and the associated advertising and sponsorship, the dollars grew and the culture shifted. The AFL became a business juggernaut, blasting through traditional ideals and casting aside old ways. The less-successful and underprepared clubs were faced with two options: change or die.
Peter Gordon, who has served as president of the Western Bulldogs since December 2012, describes the battle he fought alongside the late Lynne Kosky, a one-time Victorian minister, to save the club: ‘On 8 October 1989, Lynne stood with me and a few other diehards before 20 000 people at the Western Oval after the VFL had acted to destroy us, and declared ourselves a rebel board. Lynne of course battled the sexism of these times. I well remember the night in October 1989 we met the VFL Commission to negotiate the readmission of the team, Lynne arguing points to an aging commissioner who had never before had to argue the toss with an articulate young woman. The best response he could muster was to wink and blow kisses at her as she spoke’.
The gritty Doggies hung on, surviving with only a name change from Footscray to the Western Bulldogs in 1996. But the expansion of the league to sixteen teams had stretched the available resources and left the Bulldogs whimpering, the club’s strong community-based heart left with a thready pulse. The home ground facilities of the proud western-suburbs club had become shabby and dilapidated. Combined with a poor performance record, this sunk morale among players, administrators and supporters.
In 2002, Campbell Rose, an experienced manager of major events, was recruited by then Western Bulldogs president David Smorgon to the role of CEO, with a clear brief to turn the ship around. Campbell, being a Rugby player, had never been to a VFL or AFL game. In fact, he was uncomfortable with the game, and recalls his schooldays at Melbourne Grammar ‘where I was called the bum-sniffer because I played Rugby’. As such, Campbell says, ‘I was football agnostic, so when I took the role I adopted the Bulldogs’. Fifteen years later, Campbell has three children and a partner who are all mad about the Bulldogs.
Campbell began advocating for greater diversity and the promotion of several women to the board, including Gaye Hamilton and Sue. ‘When I started, the patron of the club was one Susan Alberti’, he says. ‘I had heard about Sue many years previously through a mutual friend and great fellow, Bruce McPhail. He used to talk about this incredible couple, Sue and Angelo Alberti, with great respect and admiration. When I met Sue she was a widow and her daughter had just died. She was an amazing contributor to the club financially and also spiritually.’
But Campbell faced an entrenched culture and notes that there was also an element of cynicism. Questions were raised about the women’s commercial and financial acumen, the strength of their networks, their track record in business—questions that were rarely, if ever, asked of men in similar circumstances. ‘People didn’t know much about Sue’, Campbell says, ‘other than through her patronage of the club. People asked, “Has she inherited the money? Is she still going to be patron? Is she still going to be good for the money?” It was no simple task getting through the resistance’.
Sue was appointed patron of the Western Bulldogs in 2000 principally in recognition of her driving and funding an upgrade of the old change rooms. She says she felt honoured by the appreciation of the players and the club officials. Four years later, she was appointed to the club’s board. Sue says, ‘I found this appointment exciting as it allowed me to take advantage of the opportunities to guide influence and determine the future of my beloved WBFC’.
But while Sue had won a seat on the board, George Pappas, a club director at the time, confirms that acceptance of Sue by other board members was not immediate: ‘There was a bit of questioning at first as to why she was on the board—of course, because she’s a woman, in a blokey environment. And there was some concern that she might want to run things, get involved in the colour of the jumpers, that sort of thing, because she likes to get into the detail’. George then spells out why Sue was a good choice for the board: ‘When we were looking at the composition of the board, we needed people with a mix of skills but also people who provided access to various networks. Sue was a network in her own right … and to be quite blunt, we needed people on there who actually had money’.
Campbell says he saw in Sue someone who could help reposition the Bulldogs—a differentiator. He also saw her as very community-orientated and embedded in the local culture. When the model is right, Australian Rules football clubs are uniquely woven throughout local communities, with connections in all spheres, including recreation and business. Through an unparalleled supporter culture, the sport provides the chance to cross divides in gender, class, race and religion. But this had slipped in Footscray and the club was losing those connections, a common theme with the league in general. Now the Bulldogs had the chance to become the pace-setter, and it was an opportunity that the leadership grasped with both hands. ‘Our club needed to be seen as part of the community and to take it to a place where we were actively supported by the local people’, says Campbell.
Making a contribution to the western suburbs is, for Sue, about giving where people need help. Although she didn’t grow up in Melbourne’s west, the fact that Sue grew up in a housing commission estate means she understands well what needs to happen in working-class suburbs. She appreciates where she can best make an impact, and her generosity takes many forms. Elda Basso describes the Campbell Rose initiative Principal of the Day, whereby Sue organised two Western Bulldogs scholarships for a western suburbs’ primary school: ‘One was for academic achievement and one for endeavour. The recipients are each given $1000 towards education costs for secondary school, going into year seven’.
Acknowledging Sue’s business skills, community relationships and meticulous presentation, Campbell recognised that she could help put the Bulldogs on the right footing: ‘I could see there was something special about Sue. I said to David Smorgon that we needed diversity around the board table. Sue was so much more than the patron. I battled the stereotypes, broke down the barriers. In no way do I mean our board was anti-women, but if you swim around in the fish bowl long enough, after a while you end up drinking your own shit. You don’t understand the environment you’re creating. And anything that challenges that is a shock. You don’t necessarily ask if maybe there’s a different way of doing things. And I could see that Sue could bring that dimension’.
George Pappas also appreciated the many benefits of including women in the leadership mix relatively early compared with other clubs: ‘The Western Bulldogs had very impressive women on our board: Gaye Hamilton, Liz Harman and Susan Alberti. One of the unexpected benefits for the Bulldogs was, because we had women like Sue Alberti on our board, we were seen as a very progressive organisation’.
Through her experiences in the building industry, Sue had lived such challenges before. So when she joined the board, she brought with her a breath of fresh air. Regardless of the role or task ahead of her, Sue is unafraid of challenging others, raising a conversation in an area she believes important. While ‘the perfumed steamroller’ is not an entirely inappropriate description, it fails to capture Sue’s consistent application of respect, good manners and social intelligence. Her staff are unanimous in describing lack of punctuality and manners as Sue’s pet hates. ‘She doesn’t tolerate people being late’, says her nephew Andrew with a laugh. ‘It’s a respect issue for Sue. And wearing clothes that are not appropriate to the dress code—Auntie hates that! And she also won’t put up with people talking while someone is presenting. She won’t hesitate to tell people to shush.’
Stoicism was another trait that went on display in the board room. Campbell is still incredulous several years after bearing witness to the extent of Sue’s toughness: ‘I noticed Sue was a bit pale in a board meeting. No-one had told me but I found out later that she had tripped on the stairs on the way in and not only broken her collar bone, she’d torn two tendons off her shoulder! She was sitting in the meeting, looking a bit pale but she was still contributing. She ended up with her arm in a sling for months, but never made any big deal about it. An incredibly strong woman’.
According to Campbell, when he was recruited, the days at the Bulldogs were bleak at best: ‘It wasn’t a matter of making ends meet. They were too far apart. These days were very dark, dark indeed’. Six months into his tenure as CEO, Campbell bumped into Nuno D’Aquino, one of Melbourne’s captains of industry and at the time a director of the Collingwood Football Club: ‘We talked over coffee and he asked, “Why did you take that job Campbell? It is a road to nowhere”. In the conversation, Nuno told me, “You will leave that club, with it in a pine box. The AFL will relocate it to Queensland”’.
The physical infrastructure at the Whitten Oval was in an appalling state. Campbell provides graphic details: ‘The place had no asset maintenance, no investment. Every night the gas would build up in both sets of toilets, and the vents were blocked so all of the toilets would blow out overnight. There would be no water in the S-bend, so every morning the whole place stank of shit. People would get sick. You’d bring files home and they’d smell, they’d make the room smell’. Sue echoes Campbell’s description of the conditions at the club: ‘We had a rundown facility with rats running around, we had a CEO with an office in the fire escape, and our board meetings were in a room with no ventilation. It really was disgusting’.
Campbell says that changing the environment at the club ‘required serious intervention to breathe life into the carcass’. So under his guidance, the club leadership weaved a plan to redevelop the Whitten Oval: ‘I had a concept that involved lining up the dominoes to materialise $20 million in a short space of time. I went to see Sue, who was on the board and also on the Forever Foundation. The foundation exists to ensure the Western Bulldogs remains forever, in perpetuity’. The foundation members met in Sue’s ballroom in her Toorak home, where Campbell’s pitch to raise over $3.5 million from those present began with a specific request to Sue to commit $1 million to backing the Whitten Oval redevelopment. ‘She came back within a few hours and said yes, she was with me’, says Campbell. ‘If Sue hadn’t done that, my plan wouldn’t have worked. If I hadn’t had a leadership gift, a leader within the Bulldogs community, putting their faith in me, the whole concept would have failed. By believing in me and what I was aiming for, Sue gave me the ability to look the other high-net-worth individuals in the eye and ask for their commitment’. Campbell goes even further, stating it as fact that if Sue had not backed him, the Western Bulldogs wouldn’t have had the onfield success the club has since had.
Campbell and Sue are both proud of the result, and a strong bond remains between the maverick Rugby fan and the immaculate blonde ‘pocket rocket’. Campbell reflects with satisfaction: ‘We raised $32 million. We shifted it from hopeless, hapless and helpless to an environment of pride, success and excellence. On that journey, I cannot acknowledge, recognise and thank Sue Alberti enough for what she did’. Sue is equally satisfied, noting, ‘They only give tough jobs to women’. With a frown and then a laugh, she also says that every time she spoke to Campbell, the money went up another couple of million: ‘It went from $20 million to $32 million, but we got it’.
A critical element beyond the financial contributions was the work done to change the ethos and positioning of the Western Bulldogs, and to reintroduce self-respect to the club. Campbell recalls, ‘Our players would walk around with shirts hanging out, looking dishevelled. Sue would say, “Why are they dressing like that? Why don’t they tuck their shirts in? Why don’t they shave?” She was right. We needed to be proud of our team. I understood that’. Campbell is emphatic: ‘Sue was right to comment on presentation because it was about the way the Bulldogs carried themselves in the community. It was about having pride rather than being a bunch of down-and-outers who were at the bottom of the ladder. We wanted to change that culture of being known as the scraggers, the “scrays” of Footscray. The people of the west, the great unwashed. You don’t need to be wealthy, rich, famous, but you can have pride in who you are, by wearing what you have got well. And grooming yourself well, presenting and behaving yourself well’.
Campbell recounts a lesson from his father: ‘I was about eighteen and needed to see the GP. I was planning to go to the appointment with my thongs on and dressed quite shabbily. My father, who was a GP himself, said, “The doctor will get an immediate impression of your health, education and nutrition based on what you’re wearing and he will start to make his diagnosis. The assessment will be made in the first three minutes. None of these things, your health, education and nutrition, none of them match your appearance. Dress properly and don’t wear thongs. Clean your act up son”’.
Campbell summarises the simple philosophy behind the club’s cultural transformation: ‘Sue brought some of those things to a club that was trying to drag itself, to build itself, out of a quagmire of a tragic history. It was a history of sorrow and sadness, a history of losers with an air of “We couldn’t get out of our own way”. If you believe something long enough, it becomes the norm, the standard. Near enough becomes good enough. If the Bulldogs were to have success in my tenure or in the future, this had to change’.
Those closest to Sue have nominated her appearance as the thing that she would never compromise. In Sue’s fanaticism about her personal presentation, the pedantic attention to detail is all about respect. This is as much a part of Sue as her punctuality and preparedness. Sue shares a story that illustrates her zeal: ‘I remember back at school, at Siena, they wanted to take a photo of me. I was class captain in my first year of high school and they wanted a photo in front of the statue of Christ on the cross. When I saw the photo, I noticed my blazer was missing the middle button. I’ve never forgotten that. More than fifty years later and I still remember that button missing’.
Sue is a study in old-school femininity, styled to the last detail. According to her brother Richard, Sue can be very girly-girly—she adores flowers, loves diamonds, and has been known to wear frilly socks. Any endeavour will see her with every red fingernail chip-free, lipstick flawless, and blonde hair tamed, set and still. And always the pearls. Sue recalls enjoying working in a family law office in Collins Street: ‘I didn’t have expensive clothes and I wore fake pearls. One or two nice pieces and a good jacket is all you need. But I wore it well’.
Bringing this physically different presence into the widely acknowledged ‘blokeyness’ of the football setting definitely created ripples. Homogeny rarely tolerates non-conformance. The critical comments typically occurred behind the hand. In the company of AFL power-brokers, observers noted a level of ‘tolerance’ as well as the occasional snide comment. It was not unusual to hear: ‘How much make-up is she wearing today?’
Linda Dessau, Governor of Victoria and an AFL commissioner from 2007 to 2015, champions women’s high-level involvement in sports and other endeavours, and is a great admirer of Sue Alberti: ‘Every woman has faced opposition in the AFL, not because there are bad people in the AFL but because it mirrors the community. All the women who have taken early leadership steps have been in a male-dominated body and sporting code. It’s inevitable that it’s not all plain sailing’. As a woman who has been heavily engaged in a football club herself, the Governor is very aware of what it was like when no-one was used to women in any part of a football club, at any level: ‘You feel it when you are the only female in the room. That’s not because anyone’s trying to do the wrong thing by you. You only have to be the only man who walks into a room of fifty women to feel the level of discomfort. You feel it because it is a paradigm that’s different from a diverse paradigm’.
In that particular paradigm, Linda Dessau explains, people express themselves in the same way ‘because it’s homogenous. That’s not because anyone’s excluding you, but there’s a language, a terminology and a tone that is not prepared for the new norm’. As she points out, ‘The aim of diversity is that everyone feels comfortable and not like the odd one out. We all need to see ourselves mirrored back to feel comfortable’.
Not everybody responds positively when the norm is challenged. Campbell Rose speaks of being in the room with Sue when people were laughing at her, and Sue was fully aware that they were laughing at her. The discomfort for Sue at times has been palpable, involving quite vocal criticism, even threats and attempts at intimidation. Peter Gordon describes the Aussie Rules outer in particular as ‘a place which gave rise to the venting of more racism, sexism and homophobia than most other places’.
Once, among the game-day foot traffic on an escalator, a rude accusation was overheard: ‘There goes that footy lady, the one spending all her husband’s money’. Muttered within earshot of someone close to Sue, it received a swift response—‘She’s a self-made woman!’, delivered with all the indignation the other comment deserved.