The serious business of football

SCHOOL was in at Telstra Dome on Friday morning when a group of MBA students from Stanford University received a crash course in the AFL from the league’s general manager of marketing and communications, Dr Colin McLeod.

Thirty students from the prestigious, California-based college are in Australia on a study tour and they proved to be an attentive audience as Dr McLeod guided them through a presentation on our indigenous game.

“I’ve got to say, I was really pleased,” Dr McLeod said at the conclusion of the presentation.

“It’s a nice thing for the AFL. I mean Stanford is the No.1-ranked business school in the world and around this table today we would have had some people who, in one way or another, are going to lead America in business, the community and politics in 10, 15, 20 years time.

“So to get the chance to talk about Australian football with them was too good to pass up.”

Dr McLeod admitted it had been no small task to take a unique Australian game with 150 years of rich history and boil it down into an hour-long seminar for an audience of American college students. 

“It is pretty challenging; we have a game that has lots of rules and lots of unique features so I tried to make it as simple as possible,” he said.

“I tried to talk more about the game and where it fits into Australian life and the sorts of things that the AFL does with its brand around women and indigenous issues and that sort of stuff. We quite rightly take a lot of pride in the fact that there aren’t many sports around the world doing those sorts of things.

“These are pretty bright people. I think those are the sorts of things that would appeal to them more and give them something to go away and think about rather than trying to bog them down with the details of how the game’s played.”

A five-minute video montage looking back at the events of the 2007 season proved one of the highlights of the morning with the high marks, in particular, greeted with amazed gasps.  

“I think they enjoyed it. Interestingly even not one of them had ever seen a game of Australian football before,” Dr McLeod said. 

Student Karan Chaudhry, proudly sporting a Brisbane Lions cap, said the morning had been an informative one with Melbourne a popular destination on the tour which will also take in Sydney, Cairns, Singapore and Malaysia.

“This trip is all about gaining a global perspective which is very important in business today,” Chaudhry said.

“We’ve had meetings with several major companies and organisations since we arrived and I really enjoyed learning a bit about Australian football. It looks like a very exciting game and I only wish we could have been here to see one live.”

After fielding a number of questions, Dr McLeod led the students outside where a group photo was taken shortly before the morning was capped with a guided tour of Telstra Dome.