Steven Trigg: I haven't heard any prolific criticism of the decision to extend Neil's contract. He was already contracted for 2009 and we've taken him out to 2010-11. My answer, if that's the challenge to our decision, is pretty simple - we're certain that Neil fits the strategic direction in which we're going. We're certain he's doing a simply outstanding job at the moment and I would then put it in the category of looking after your people. If you're certain about those two aspects, of the direction you want to go and the task he's performing, then it provides us with genuine stability.

To the people who want to question the decision on the basis of no grand final, I would remind them that, particularly externally, there was enormous pessimism about our chances when Neil took over in late 2004. People said we were shot and that we would spend years rebuilding, but this coach, with the support of his club, took us into two preliminary finals and got every last bit out of the playing list.

When Mark Ricciuto and a series of other senior players retired or were delisted at the end of 2007, again, a lot of external analysts said we were shot, but, again, we play in a finals series. His win-loss record is outstanding and, if people want to criticise his finals series' record, we've played six with Neil and, if we win one more, he's got a 50 per cent win-loss record in finals, so don't be too tricked by that.

We'll stand up to the fact that we'd like that finals record to be better, but it's not all that bad and, with the list that we've had and where we've been going, our performances to date have been quite outstanding.

Your chairman, Bill Sanders, appears set to retire at the end of the season. Obviously, he will leave behind a lasting legacy, but how is the succession plan unfurling?

It's not seemingly a situation of Bill retiring - he will retire. At our December meeting, following our AGM, he will retire for the second time from our club, having been CEO for 11 years and now on the board for six, including five as chairman.

He has been absolutely magnificent in the context of the development and the success of this club. He's done a wonderful job for many of us, including myself, and he's been a terrific mentor and we've loved his company as much as his guidance.

We'll miss him, but I think we're well set in terms of succession with Rob Chapman. Rob's been on our board for a couple of years, is a really experienced businessman and is a great fit for our board and our club. Rob will take it over and we need to replace Bill on the board with a casual vacancy in 2009.

The club has taken a strong stance against 'bottoming out' to gain high draft picks to 'rebuild'. Do you think the current draft system offers enough reward for teams who consistently finish in the middle band of positions on the ladder?

No, it doesn't, but that's the system. The continual tanking debate - you could go back into having a look at. I'm not promoting it, but we could look at a ballot system. That still doesn't get you around the perennial bottom sides' access to priority picks. I think we accept that if a club is really struggling over a period of time that the priority picks are, in whatever guise, fair.

You have a choice to make and we have a very simple philosophy. It's easier said than done, but we aim not to bottom out, not to strip the side back. We could've done that when Neil took over. We could've stripped the side out, because we had the oldest list in the competition, and said, 'right, we'll go into a genuine rebuilding phase'.

I don't like the term 'rebuilding' and I never have. I think players and staff hide behind that, so we would prefer to be well planned and to stay as competitive as we possibly can all the while trying to make the finals.

The experience for us, still in our hearts and minds, is that we weren't the best team in 1997 and 1998 through the minor round, but we got there and then got it right at the right time and that could still happen this year to any of the teams in the bottom part of the eight.

But you simply can't give yourself a crack at it if you're out of the eight, so our philosophy is to just keep planning, keep developing the list, keep managing out some of the seniority we think needs to be making way for the development aspect and to keep making the eight to give ourselves a chance.

Other clubs might have a different view to that, but that's ours and under this board and mine and Neil's regime, that's the way we would like it to be.

Everything appears to be going quite swimmingly for the club at the moment, but is it fair to say your biggest challenge now is translating your superior membership base into greater non-football revenue?

We're very strong in the traditional revenue streams and it's a privileged position for us to be in, but it is a full stadium for us. The membership book is, not completely full, but our ticketed membership is full. Non-football revenue for us is an issue that occupies a lot of the board's and the executives' minds.

We are aiming to boost our non-football revenue out of the new training facility, but what we're not in the business of doing is taking excessive risks either because we've seen some sporting organisations come unstuck by doing that. It will be a relatively low-risk use of core product approach.

There are some guys out there at the moment who think they are back in the sandpit playing with their Tonka toys! But seriously it's the biggest project we've ever undertaken. It's an exciting project and, having travelled around the world a bit to look at facilities it will be, in my view, one of the great sporting facilities in the world.

It will be a multi-purpose venue for the training, conditioning and development of our playing group, but it will also integrate our supporters, corporates, and the like, in a very meaningful way. It will have a commercial attachment as well, so it's a pretty exciting time for us.

The club is obviously aware of the players', coaches' and staff's current needs in the new training facility, but how important is it to be able to predict the trends so that it doesn't become outdated again in five or six years?

It's interesting because this current training facility was built and completed in late 1996 and, at the time, it was state-of-the-art and was the envy of the competition. Our development is not just about keeping ahead of the Joneses. It's about the fact that, since our facility was built, the list sizes have increased with rookies and the like. The professionalism has also gone through the roof and the players are now full-time.

That's one aspect, but one of the very key things we need to do is to engage and connect with everyday fans and corporates alike, so they feel like they're a part of it and can see and smell what's going on. You can only do that if the facility is able to deliver it and the current facility just doesn't deliver.

People love to watch the warm-up. They love to watch the players sing the song, to see the players train or sit where Andrew McLeod would get changed. All those things are really relevant and we're building this facility in a way that we can incorporate people into our club as an inclusive club and, hopefully, benefit from it and their want to stay involved.

The issue of 'no-shows' at Adelaide home games has continued this year. You have recently introduced a ticket exchange program for ticket holders, but how will the planned AAMI Stadium upgrade help in enticing fans back to the footy?

Transport in and out of the place needs to be improved and we need to put more people undercover. We need better amenities and better corporate facilities - I mean all those things add up to reaching a different market, in some cases, and in others holding onto your customer base. The development here at AAMI is critical and we're looking forward to working with the SANFL on that.

Are you fighting a losing battle trying to convince the AFL that live TV broadcasts do actually impact the crowd numbers at AAMI Stadium?

I think we are and it's probably not a bad way of putting it. We have a different view to the AFL about this subject and have had for some time. It just seems logical to us, and our research supports, that if people have a choice on a wet day or a low-attracting opponent day, some will stay home and watch the game if it's live against the gate on TV.

But we're also understanding of the enormous contribution broadcast rights make to our game.

If you had a perfect world in club land, and I've had this discussion with the AFL, that, for us, if you had live against the gate broadcasts for games against Collingwood, Essendon, Carlton, Richmond and Port Adelaide types, we probably wouldn't be as concerned about it because we know the product is really appealing.

That would be the ideal world for us, but it's not easy to swing that in terms of a broadcast rights deal. I think nine of our games this year are live on Foxtel and, yes, I think it's something we're going to have to learn to live with. What we need to do, in a really simple strategy, is to make the game-day experience so bloody good that people say, 'No, I have to go to the footy because it's too good not to go'.

Have the plans for the new training facility and also the AAMI Stadium upgrade reaffirmed the club's desire to stay at West Lakes rather than move to a proposed stadium closer to the city?

We're strongly backing in AAMI Stadium as being the future of football in South Australia and given the Government's announcement and the AFL backing, we would expect that to be the case.

But just as a hypothetical, and we've had to think this through in terms of where we're at with the significant cost of our development, were something from left-field to happen and were AAMI Stadium not the venue for football, we would still need a training venue. We would still need a training ground. The council here, I have no doubt, would like us to stay, so it would be a bit like the Hawthorn model, if you like, where they train on Waverley and have their training base alongside the ground.

That's very much how we would be and that would be fine. The training facility is still a sound investment for us.

There are issues of common concern in areas from stadium yield to AFL rules that we need to communicate on. Make no mistake, we can do that very comfortably, but when the game is on I'm the first one to have my blood pressure go up a fraction more than it usually does because it means a lot. I have no doubt it's the same coming back the other way.

One of those mutual concerns is probably still the father-son rule. Are you now resigned to the fact that the club's first father-son selection will come from a Crows player rather than a past SANFL great?

We're not bitter and twisted at all that Geelong has eight players running around at the moment, or something of that number, who have been selected under the father-son rule and we have none. It irks us, but we don't carry it with us every day because it's done and dusted and it's inequitable.

I like the culture of the thing - I always have and the club has supported the culture of it, but we think the rule has been heavily weighted against the SA and WA clubs. We've fought the good fight.

We ended up with a change that gave us the 'grandfather-son' rule and I think we're simply resigned to wait and see what comes through from our own players, as you say, when they produce, hopefully, some fine young footballers.

The Jarman sons are looking okay. The Edwards sons are looking okay. I'll be a veteran by the time they start running around, but there's some hope we might get something out of that eventually - as long as we don't change the rules again.

It's important for us to have a healthy SANFL competition so that our players who go back, play in the calibre of competition we would want them to be preparing for in terms of preparation to play AFL footy. In the first couple of years of this club's life, before my time, it yearned for a seconds or reserves side, but we're very comfortable now that our players go back to a variety of SANFL clubs, get different experiences, hear different voices and play in, what Neil would say is, a 'man's competition', and grow up very quickly in it.

If on the odd occasion, and it's happened a couple of times over the years, it's not a happy marriage between the player, us and the SANFL club, the player will move to another club. But as long as the lines of communication are good, it's a system that can work very well.

Not at the moment. There's a lot of work already been done on the Gold Coast and there's an enormous amount of work to be done in western Sydney. With Government backing, who knows, there might be a feasible claim coming out of Tasmania. But to drop a third side into this market - no, I don't think it's sustainable at the moment or would be any time soon.

Your name has been in the mix as a potential CEO for the new GC17 franchise. Could you be lured away from West Lakes?

No. I had a look at it, but no, I'm happy and I'll be staying here.

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