AFTER 14 years in the brewing industry, Mark Haysman replaced John James as Port Adelaide's chief executive last October.

In an exclusive interview, he discusses his introduction to the role, measures to improve the club's stadium deal and financial situation and plans for the football department – including coach Mark Williams' contract.

THE ROLE

You’ve been at Port Adelaide for seven or eight months now. Is the job all it’s cracked up to be?
It’s been great. I think our underlying financial situation has probably been more challenging than we first thought coming in, but I’ve really enjoyed it. The people are great and it’s a great environment. I feel like we’ve achieved a fair bit in that time, so we’re certainly on track in terms of really addressing the underlying issues of the club.

The club has traditionally promoted from within. How has your 'outside' perspective helped in addressing some of the issues currently confronting it?
I certainly came in with an open mind in regards to some of the paths that we might be able to take. Coming from a broad business background, I was able to build on some of the great things we’d already done while also bringing some new ideas and being open to suggestions to how we could expand the revenue base and get us up and running. I think we’ve got a good combination of people who have been here for a while and new faces with fresh ideas.

You mentioned the club’s financial position. How privy were you to that during the application process or when you were first appointed CEO?
It’s been more challenging than I first understood coming in, but as the year (2008) unfolded there was a lot of change and we really only got a clear picture of where things were at, at the back-end of the financial year. We all understand that better now and I guess that means we can really face up to where we’re at and some of the fundamental things we need to change to ensure we can be strong and successful for many, many years to come.

The club recently received some good news in the form of a $2.5 million cash injection from the SANFL. At the time your president Brett Duncanson said the club was hopeful of securing some additional funding from the AFL. How are those talks progressing?
(Executive commissioner) Leigh Whicker and the SANFL have been terrific. We’ve worked very collaboratively with them. We had some initial challenges in trying to get an understanding as to how big the issues were and why, but I think now they fully understand. Leigh has been terrific in supporting the club in the short-term with $3.5 million in grants. I guess the money we’ve generated over the years, the SANFL has reinvested back into us now, which is terrific. That money helps with the short-term base.

Now what we need to do is invest for growth and really progress the very complex stadium negotiations. At the same time now, we can talk to the AFL about perhaps some grants from them and in particular some ASDs (Annual Special Distribution) to support the short- to medium-term while we turn our business around.

STADIUMS

Aside from a new stadium deal, what else do you need to do to make sure the club is financially sustainable going forward?
The stadium deal is the key thing but in addition to that, we need to work hard at growing our supporter and membership base. We need to look at parts of our business that aren’t working as well as we’d like, such as our gaming licence venue. We need to look at what options we have there to try and turn that around.

We might also have the opportunity to create some additional revenue streams by having a land footprint down at AAMI Stadium – equal to that of the Adelaide Football Club – which we would use for commercial ventures rather than a facility for us to operate out of. We’re open to any sensible ideas that would help us grow our revenue or supporter base and broaden the appeal of the club to supporters.

How would a new deal at AAMI Stadium influence the need to look at other venues, such as Adelaide Oval, as an alternative playing ground?
We’ll look at all sensible options. The thing about Adelaide Oval is that we can’t control where we play. The SANFL controls us and our home ground is AAMI. We would only pursue Adelaide Oval as an option for us if that was something the SANFL thought was going to be a ‘best for footy’ option.

We, along with the Adelaide Football Club, the SANFL and AFL, are very united in driving what’s best for SA footy overall. If it meant that Adelaide Oval was a viable option for all of us then we would certainly be keen to explore that. We wouldn’t explore that on our own without working with the SANFL.

Do you think a new stadium closer to the CBD is financially viable at present?
I don’t think it is. Obviously you need to look at all the options but in the current economic climate, I don’t think a new stadium would be the right option. There are probably a number of other priorities for the government at the moment, whether that be education in schools, hospitals or roads. I think all those things would be a priority compared to a new stadium. Down the track, there may be some appeal to a new city stadium but right now I don’t think that would be the responsible thing to do.

The club has expressed interest in extending its footprint into the Northern Territory and perhaps playing some games there. How are those talks progressing?
It’s an interesting one for us. The SA/NT commercial corridor is a very genuine one and probably the most natural link for the Northern Territory is with South Australia. We as a footy club have a genuine interest in the NT because a number of our wonderful players come from there. The Motlop boys, Peter Burgoyne and Tommy Logan all love going back there. For a long time we’ve had a strong link and the indigenous culture within our club is alive and well. Mark Williams is very much an advocate of bringing that diversity into the club and helping those boys flourish and grow.

With the Gold Coast coming in, we initially entertained the idea that we’d play them in Darwin as a home game, so that we don’t have to shift any of our home games up there and we’d still have 11 games at AAMI. We’ve had some preliminary discussions and it would certainly seem, commercially, a good move for us. It would help us attract corporate sponsors to our club, help broaden our appeal and provide some of our supporters with the opportunity to travel up to the NT and see a game up there.

It makes a lot of sense but it’s early days. We haven’t even spoken to our supporters and fans about it, but I would think they’d see it as a sensible thing for us to look at.

For any club to go there, they’d need to have a long-term approach to it and a genuine interest rather than just a commercial interest.

As an outsider, what is your view on the current stadium deal issue in Victoria?
Obviously we’ve been focused on the challenges we have here, but I think there needs to be some breakthroughs over there for the clubs that aren’t getting as big a slice of the pie as they should. We’re facing similar challenges here, but we’re working well with the stadium owners, the SANFL, to try to get it fixed and that’s probably the major difference here.

THE FUTURE

Mark Williams’ contract has been a talking point for a while now and the club has repeatedly stated that there is a process in place for those negotiations. How do you balance that process against the possibility that Mark could be offered a deal too good to refuse when he is permitted to begin talking to rival clubs after June 30?
There’s no doubt that Mark has been wonderful for this footy club and is a great contributor and has a massive passion for it. He’s a very good coach, so there’s no doubt that other clubs will be keenly watching what happens here. If they had the opportunity to have a talk to Mark, they would be silly not to.

For us, we’ve had a lot going on. We spoke to Mark very early in the piece about the process we would be running and we’re going to stick to that. We’re not going to let any of those external influences or what maybe happening over the border influence us. We’ll follow the right process here and we’ll be working through that over the coming weeks and months.

What is the current position on the training facility upgrade given the club’s financial plight?
Having the best possible facilities we can for our players and our people is critical. We also do some outstanding work with community groups and we’re keen to enhance what we have here, so that it works better with us bringing groups through and running our community programs. We have to specific purpose grants from the Federal and State Governments to improve our facility from a football and community perspective, and frankly there would be no development without those grants.

We’re working hard on getting that up and running in a staged way and we’re excited with what the plans look like. We did defer it a little bit given all the challenges we’ve had, but we’re hoping we’ll get underway in July-August in terms of turning the soil.