‘A little left field’: Swans break 20-year trend in appointing Pavlich as new CEO

For the first time in more than 20 years, the Sydney Swans have looked outside their organisation for their new chief executive officer. But they haven’t strayed too far from the mould.

Not long after Tom Harley left the club to become right-hand man to AFL boss Andrew Dillon, just eight weeks ago, the Swans quickly identified his ideal replacement: another widely-respected, well-presented former key position player and club captain from South Australia.

Matthew Pavlich is cut from the same cloth as Harley. In fact, their on-field careers regularly intersected, with Harley a centre-half back for Geelong and Pavlich a centre-half forward for Fremantle, making them direct combatants.

Now they will work together in a handover period across the final weeks of the season as Harley prepares for his move to Melbourne, where he will become the AFL’s new chief operating officer, and Pavlich likewise as he brings his family across from Perth to Sydney.

“I’m wonderfully excited about this opportunity,” Pavlich said. “It’s a huge honour and an amazing thrill to be thrust into this. When I was approached, it was a little left field, but I was really excited to go through the process and also very excited to take this on.

“I feel like I got drafted 25 years ago and I’ve been preparing for something like this by virtue of playing for a long time, going to university, going into business, transitioning into that as well as media - and so whilst it’s a big role and it’s quite humbling, I feel really ready and prepared for this ... knowing that there’s a lot to learn as Tom transitions over to the AFL and I transition in.”

If the sign of a good club is that precious few major announcements leak ahead of time, then this was another credit to the Swans for running a tight ship. There was no hint that Pavlich was in line for the job until Wednesday morning, when this masthead reported the news just a few hours before it was made official.

The last time the Swans made an outsider their CEO was in 2003, when Myles Baron Hay was given the job. When he left in 2009, head of football Andrew Ireland was promoted – and when Ireland left at the end of 2018, Harley was promoted from the same role.

But chairman Andrew Pridham said he felt comfortable that the Swans would in no way be sacrificing continuity by snapping up Pavlich, a six-time All Australian representative who played 353 games for Fremantle, captained them for nine years and was their leading goalkicker for eight. He said Pavlich exemplified the “cultural standards” the Swans wanted in their new chief executive.

“I knew for some time that [Harley’s departure] was a distinct possibility, so we had a long time to think about what we were looking for in a leader of this club, and circumstances presented in such a way that we felt that it was, in this instance, better to go outside the club,” Pridham said.

“We were very keen to have our next CEO to have a similar background to Tom because he’s been such a great success. Matthew’s football pedigree, in addition to obviously his business experience and importantly his knowledge of the industry ... we’ve got great confidence that he displays every element of what we’re looking for.

“Football’s a funny industry. It throws curveballs at you all the time, so I’m sure he’s adept at dealing with those, and we’re really looking forward to his leadership.”

After retiring in 2016, Pavlich co-founded talent, technology and brand partnerships business Launchd, and was involved in the growth phase of PMY Group, a technology, data and creative services company.

During his playing career, he spent 11 years on the board of the AFL Players’ Association, including three as president, was an advisor on the AFL Laws of the Game committee, and has since worked in the media, with both Fox Sports and Nine News, where he read the sports bulletin in Perth. He also holds a bachelor of science degree and a master of business administration from the University of Western Australia.

“I guess people see me on the telly quite a bit, and think that that’s what I’ve been doing, but realistically for a decade I’ve been starting, growing and scaling and running businesses and been at the forefront of that,” Pavlich said.

“There’ll be plenty of unknowns about this role. There’ll be plenty of things that I’ll have to listen and learn from. And I said to the staff earlier, the IP, the expertise and the knowledge that is in that room - I’m just going to have to absorb.

“I also said, seek first to understand, then be understood. And that’s the beauty of a footy club. That’s the beauty of the people that we have here at the Swans, is that the culture is strong. There’s great stability and strength off the field and we’re hoping to quickly get back that on-field success as well.”

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