In part one of my chat with Perth Glory board member and Deputy Chairman Lui Giuliani, we spoke about the club’s lack of on-field success in season 2010/2011, Tony Sage’s threats to leave the club, and the report currently being carried out by Ric Charlesworth into the club’s overall performance off the pitch. In this final part of our interview, we now move to a somewhat more tricky subject; player relations. Starting with the infamous Jamie Coyne / PFA contract saga.
Now onto the hot topic of player management - it’s probably fair to say that relations have become a bit strained with certain individuals in the past few weeks. Jamie Coyne played practically the whole season, and then was dropped one game before he allegedly activated a clause in his contract; what’s the story there?
LG: I really can’t speak about Jamie Coyne. At the end of the day, the coach picks the side.
Fair enough. What then about Jamie’s brother Chris - is this something that has affected him as well?
Chris is still with the club, he’s currently involved in rehab training, he’s contracted next year and I’m sure he’s pretty keen to play and perform well after what happened earlier this year.
Going from one Jamie to another- Jamie Harnwell. The club inadvertently had a banner on the website which surprised fans a little bit, saying to come and watch him in his farewell match. This sprang up before the player said anything about it himself - now that’s not obviously an ideal situation?
No of course it’s not an ideal situation. Obviously we’ve been having discussions with Jamie in the last few weeks and we were getting a final plan in place. We finalised the details late last week, we knew how we were going to proceed, and then in a moment of inadvertent technical problems the website jumped the gun a little bit.
So Jamie’s retirement wasn’t news to the man himself, then?
[Laughs] No, it’s something that we’d been discussing for a couple of weeks, he’d had discussions with Ian Ferguson and myself, and we came up with a joint release and the website was a little... overzealous.
Perth has had a couple of technical hiccups like that recently.
What’s the cliche? When it rains, it pours. Wish I could change history, but unfortunately I can’t.
You’ll be happy to know that I voted Eugene Dadi, Amaral, and Jimmy Downey as our best players of 2010/11 on the official poll on the club website then. It has since been corrected, shall we say.
You’re joking. [Pauses] I guess that’s just something else we’ll need to chase up.
Do you think that overall, with some of the issues the club’s had this year - such as the PFA and Jamie Coyne, Chris Coyne’s loan, and our dwindling crowds, the club’s image has taken a bit of a battering?
I think that a lot of it depends on how we perform on the park. When you’re performing on the park, these issues don’t matter, and everything seems to go okay. When the team’s not winning, all those other issues come to the forefront. The reality is you have similar issues every other year, whether you’re going well or not. We’ve just got to get back to the focus being on good performances on the park.
What can you tell us about the delayed player transfers then?
The only real issue we had was with the two Romanian recruits. Fundamentally, what impaired us there was the Romanian football club. Now let me tell you about that. To understand the whole Baird and Mitchell issue - and Josh Rose at Central Coast, he would have got his clearance about a week earlier - is that we applied for an international transfer on the 18th of May. Now normally that’s a 24-, 48-hour process. It goes to the FFA. The FFA then push it to the Romanian football organisation. They should respond within 24 to 48 hours. The Romanian Football Federation don’t respond because the club says, “No no... Baird is still under contract”.
But they’re just playing games, because they haven’t paid Bairdy for three or four months. They’re trying to get him to say, “Oh look just let me go and I’ll forego those lost pay packets”. But Bairdy’s not going to do that. So he gets the PFA involved in the process who put in an appeal to FIFA on his behalf. So we get FIFA intervention at the Romanian Football Federation and they ask why this player hasn’t been paid - they’ve got three weeks to answer. So the Romanian Federation take that three weeks and they don’t respond; so FIFA gives them another two weeks and they still don’t respond. So it goes to the Players Status Committee in Switzerland and it gets heard by a judge. But now the bloody World Cup’s on, so he doesn’t hear the thing until August.
That judge by the way was in Monte Carlo, so we tried going to great lengths to make him hear the case over there instead of flying back to Switzerland. So after the PFA, the FFA, FIFA, all these parties become involved - we’ve applied for an international transfer certificate, and so we’ve got to wait for them to go through their process. Josh Mitchell has a court hearing, Josh Rose has a court hearing, and the last one to go is Michael Baird; who apparently pissed off the Romanians the most. So it was what, the 27th of August by the time it got through. And we started the transfer process on the 18th of May.
Well, we’re now arriving at the end of the season, so let’s go over a few questions doing the rounds at the moment. To kick it off, Robbie Fowler - the West has a poll on their website asking if he’s been worth it or not, and opinion is pretty split. For all the extra supporters he brought in at the start of the year, we’re now over 10,000 fans down on that first game. Has the Fowler factor worn off? Will he be back next year?
We’re still in discussions with Robbie and his agent, we’re in negotiations, we’re looking at reduced terms and obviously we’ll see what happens.
Now his sometime-strike partner Mile Sterjovski; I believe he costs the club about $600,000 a year. Will he stay at the club?
Mile’s still a contracted player, and that’s all I can really say on the matter.
Statistically, our current coach is the worst we’ve ever had. He’s got a handshake agreement with Tony Sage - does that still stand, despite the limited progress the team has made this year?
Yes. Tony’s made a commitment there and he’ll honour his commitment.
Back to internal matters for a second, and the Perth Glory board makeup is, from what I understand, five successful businessmen...
Sorry? Did you say successful?
Okay... let’s say it’s five businessmen then. There’s little football knowledge there - is this something the club will seek to address?
Look, I think that’s something which will likely come out of this review process. We’ll definitely try and bolster the football knowledge at the club. We’ll continue to look at bringing in experienced people. We do go to various people for advice, but perhaps we’ll need to review that and make it a more formalised process.
Is the club open to having a fan representative on the board?
I don’t really feel that we’re for or against the idea - we’ll look at it, as part of the review everything is open. If we find the right sort of people for the board and they want to ‘absorb’ themselves in it, then they’ll be more than welcome.
Staying on the subject of the fans, are you aware of the fan forums happening over east at the moment where fans are meeting with the heads of the A-League clubs, media pundits, and ex-players about the state of the game?
We’re aware of some of the various happenings, and as you’ll recall we had our own forums running for a while at the club. They went for a bit, we tried those, and I’m sure Paul Kelly would be open to trying that sort of discussion again. I’m not really sure what happened to those...
Let’s just say there were internal issues. I think the one difference here though is over east they’re almost open forums on football as a whole - state league bodies, the direction of the game, the welfare of the clubs - not just an internal discussion. If something like that came up in WA, would Glory be interested in attending?
Oh look, anything that’s to do with helping and improving WA football we’d definitely be committed to that. We’ve been working a lot closer with Football West, we’ve definitely stepped up our community involvement, and we’re supporting the NTC. So we’d definitely try to be involved there.
Well Lui, we’re just about wrapped up here. Taking off your club hat and putting on your fan hat for a moment... what’s the biggest positive you’ve taken out of this year? Your highlight of the season?
Definitely the first game. That was a real highlight - 16,000 people turning up for the game. I thought at that point, ‘yeah, we’re really doing something right here’. But unfortunately that was short-lived.
Quite... and equally, what was your worst moment?
I think that game some weeks back when I first thought, ‘we are not going to make the finals’. I was in Sydney and we were playing Central Coast, and we got drubbed 5-0. We had high hopes for this year, and then... [Pauses] Well, unfortunately it hasn’t gone to plan.
Well, returning to the positive for my final question. Your thoughts on Jamie Harnwell, and with his final game coming up and all.
Look, I’m hoping a lot of people are there to support someone who - and I genuinely say this - who has given his all for the Glory. The guy just gives it all for the club, and when you still see his passion on Monday when he was making the announcement, you’re just full of respect for a guy who acts with the highest integrity both on and off the field. And I just hope that people turn out, just forget about the season for a bit, and just celebrate a great career.
If I know Jamie he’ll be back thumping state league players for Sorrento before you know it...
Yeah, he will get a kick out of it. It’ll be good for him to escape the daily grind of A-League football and everything that comes with that.
Lui, thanks again for giving up your time today. If I can leave you with one thing - please go and find me a playmaking midfielder?
Oh look mate, that Lionel Messi, he’s probably a good attacking midfielder isn’t he? We’ll just recruit someone like that. [laughs] No, but look - it really is all about recruiting well, and we’ll keep working at it.
To finish this piece off I want to also thank Steve Nelkovski, the Glory’s media and PR man, who set up the interview for me in the first place. It’s not something that was ever achieved under his predecessors - I think I’ve been through three of them now - and it’s good to know that despite the pressure really being on in some parts of the club, others have improved and matured a lot recently.
And with that, ladies and gents, I close the clubhouse doors. What do you think?
