Soccer, up against former Spanish PM, Peter Clarke, Seek

5. Hiddink dodges an almighty bullet but recriminations still flow

By Stephen Mayne

A history-making day for Australian soccer almost went out the window this morning because of an enormous blunder at the selection table. That's the view of Australia's goalkeeper in the 1974 World Cup, Jack Reilly, who told Crikey in no uncertain terms this morning from a mobile phone while driving from Stuttgart to Frankfurt airport an hour after the game about the blunder in dropping goal keeper Mark Schwarzer for AC Milan reserve Zeljko Kalac.

"Australia's four coaches don't seem to know anything about goalkeeping," says Reilly. "More than anything else, goalkeeping is a confidence game, so why would you pick a guy who has only played a handful of games over the past year? They've potentially destroyed the confidence of both goalkeepers with this crazy decision which almost cost us the most important game in our history."

Reilly conceded five goals at the 1974 World Cup when Australia lost 3-0 to West Germany and 2-0 to East Germany, but his clean sheet in the 0-0 draw with Chile was the finest achievement of his career.

Kalac's aggressive comments about Schwarzer as he tried to crank up the pressure in the training camp before the first game have now come back to bite him in a big way. Try these arrogant comments for size:

"I think he's more worried than I am. He's got somebody on his back now. His form hasn't been the best and he knows it. So now with me coming in to play against Greece, it's not as easy as it was for him when his selection was somewhat automatic. That's not the case any more, and some people feel the pressure when it's like that."

"I don't feel any pressure, I've showed what I can do," said Kalac, when asked after a third day of high intensity training whether he was also feeling the pressure. "All I've ever wanted is equal opportunity and that's what I'm getting now."

It was Kalac who clearly succumbed to the pressure in conceding that soft second half goal, demonstrating exactly why Schwarzer will be reinstated for the Italy game by a thoroughly relieved coaching panel who would have been hung, drawn and quartered if the referee had correctly ruled Harry Kewell was offside and Croatia had progressed.

Reilly predicted exactly that in this interview with Fox Sports on 4 June when he attacked Kalac's poor form and big mouth before predicting: "If he played and something untoward happened, there would be a massive backlash."

Hiddink combines genius and incompetence, but he was diplomatic in his post game interview and presumably delighted about an estimated $1 million performance bonus that will go his way which, incidentally, should be disclosed to the public given that we're paying for it.

FFA chief executive John O'Neill also skirted around the Kalac's performance on AM this morning when Tony Eastley's opening question focused on the goal keeping selection blunder. Despite the euphoria, this issue will not go away.

Disclosure: Jack Reilly is a good mate and People Power candidate at the forthcoming Victorian election who is rushing back to Australia for a launch function next Thursday night which will probably turn into a World Cup debate. Also, my 106 year old English grandfather is from Middlesbrough, where Schwarzer has kept goals superbly for the past nine years so apologies for the blatant bias.




12. From kindergarten politics to a Spanish PM

By Stephen Mayne, unconfirmed candidate for the News Corp board

As Australia's most unsuccessful candidate, there have been plenty of interesting electoral opponents over the years but who would have thought a tilt at the News Corp board would finish up as a contest with the immediate past prime minister of Spain, Jose Maria Aznar?

October and November will be busy with the state election and hopefully an uncontested run at a second term as president of the local kinder. However, both campaigns will be interrupted when I'll put out the following statement – "Excuse me folks, just got to pop over to New York to contest an election with the man who took Spain into the Coalition of the Willing for a seat on the board of the world's most powerful media empire. Can someone else hand out a few flyers to the kinder mums until I'm back?"

The Guardian was as surprised as anyone at the appointment because Rupert seems to be rewarding one of America's few friends over the Iraq war. And with Fox News operative Tony Snow taking over as Dubya's official spokesman, the links seem to be getting closer. After all, who can forget Tory campaign director Lynton Crosby claiming last year that The Sun backed Tony Blair last year because Rupert wanted to reward his support of the Iraq war.

What does this mean John Howard can expect from Rupert in the coming years? We all know the editorial support will be strong in 2007, but what about a seat on the News Corp board? Perhaps the Coalition of the Willing could be recreated at News Corp HQ on the Avenue of the Americas as Rupert has given the vanquished Spanish PM a helping hand and Blair, Bush and Howard will all presumably be gone within three years.

Rupert himself won't be facing his first News Corp election ever until 2007 but the slate of directors up for renewal at the October AGM in New York include Lachlan Murdoch, Arthur Siskind, John Thornton and Tom Perkins. It will be interesting to see how Aznar and Mayne fit into the election process, because Rupert, who claims to want to spread democracy around the world, completely rorted the election by censoring my platform last time.

Aznar may attract some opposition from News Corp shareholders because his commercial experience is questionable and the board is already stacked with Rupert's mates and right wing ideologues such as Viet Dinh, the lawyer who wrote The Patriot Act for the Bush administration. Then again, the link between politics and business is much tighter in the US – Dick Cheney is a former CEO of Halliburton and Condi Rice made her name at Chevron.

If only former Australian politicians could crack a few high profile boards. The only one to have broken through is Nick Greiner, who currently chairs Bradken and is a director of Stockland, QBE Insurance and McGuigan Simeon Wines. Maybe John Howard's News Corp gig will break the mould.




19. Why Peter Clarke should win Warrandyte

By Stephen Mayne

The Liberal Party has a long and unfortunate history of failing to preselect high profile candidates including Alan Jones, Graeme Samuel and Malcolm Turnbull – the first time at least.

Indeed, as Christian Kerr pointed out yesterday, the NSW division is sending a terrible message by giving a quality candidate in Federal S-x Discrimination Commissioner Pru Goward a hostile reception in the race to run for the Liberals in the state seat of Epping.

The Victorian division is also no stranger to rejecting good candidates. Who can forget the way the Lana McLean won a preselection against Helen Kroger when Jeff Kennett bailed out of Burwood in 1999? Kroger, the outgoing Liberal President in Victoria, is now headed to Canberra as a senator.

Similarly, current Victorian state director Julian Sheezel is another who tried and failed to win a state seat and Nick Minchin's senior adviser Michael Brennan, a highly regarded political operative, was rejected by the preselectors of Doncaster two weeks ago, although Mary Wooldridge, the sister of Michael, was also a good candidate.

Which brings us to the Warrandyte preselection on Sunday, when Ted Baillieu's great mate Peter Clarke goes up against four rivals led by Ryan Smith, the preferred candidate of outgoing deputy leader Phil Honeywood.

Clarke is a former leader of the Property Council in Victoria and mayor of Heidelberg who is copping all sorts of unfair flak from the Costello-Kroger faction. Sure, Clarke has been associated with Primelife but a couple of consulting jobs does not make someone Ted Sent's business partner.

I wrongly said on Monday that Clarke ran for Melbourne City Council with that big drinking embarrassment Fiona Snedden, when in fact his running mate was Emily Tang as you can see here. This was a bum steer from camp Costello which seems to put factional allegiances ahead of candidate quality in deciding who they back.

If the preselectors of Warrandyte know what is best for the Liberals, they'll back Clarke but don't be surprised if the local NIMBYs in this green wedge electorate reject the property development man for a local backed by the retiring member.




27. How the Seek bonanza surpasses all others for PBL

By Stephen Mayne, very happy small Seek shareholder

When you invest just over $500 in more than 120 different companies, you really notice the ones that reach $1,000. Since deciding to build Australia's biggest small portfolio last year, only a handful of my stocks have delivered this performance – BHP-Billiton, CSR, Caltex, Just Jeans, Macquarie Bank, Record Investments, Wattyl and Zinifex.

However, the Packer-backed online classifieds business Seek.com joined the club yesterday when its shares broke through $5 for the first time and have now more than doubled the $2.10 float price in April 2005.

So, on the same day that Murdoch commentator Mark Day was ripping into the Packer family's PBL for holding back digital technology in free-to-air television through its lobbying power with the Howard Government, the family's embrace of the internet in cutting the lunch of newspaper classifieds was heading towards being a ten bagger.

PBL only paid an average 58c a pop for its 70 million Seek shares and this $41 million investment is now worth a stunning $356 million. A paper profit of $315 million dwarfs anything else that the Packers have played around with in recent years, save for the company-making Crown Casino takeover in 1998-99.

The 50% stake in eBay was sold for $US65 million in October 2002 but this went to ecorp which was only 74% owned by PBL at the time. Indeed, Seek is now far more profitable than the whole ecorp play when PBL pocketed $161 million floating 134 million shares at $1.20 each in 1999 and then shelled out $95 million in cash buying them back at just 55c a pop in April 2003.

Day is absolutely right in terms of digital technology at Nine, but you have to admire the Packers for the way they've hedged their bets. The nine-year-old NineMSN joint venture with Microsoft has been a boon that Telstra is now looking to join, the eBay joint venture yielded an easy $100 million profit, the Foxtel entry price was only $150 million off News Ltd in October 1998 and now Seek alone is showing a paper profit almost equivalent to the net write-off on One.Tel. And who cares if Nine has got the wobbles when the casino and magazine divisions are also performing so well.

Oh, and did anyone notice that the recent slump in Fairfax shares has reduced its market capitalisation to just $3.47 billion, whereas Seek, which didn't exist when the Howard Government came to office, is now worth $1.4 billion?

It would be very interesting to see what would happen if the long-held Packer family ambition to control Fairfax were pursued through an all scrip takeover bid by Seek. The market certainly rates it very highly, unlike the discount which hangs around the new Ron Walker-David Kirk leadership team at Fairfax. Incidentally, my $513 investment in Fairfax last August is now only worth $426.70.

Copyright © 2024 The Mayne Report. All rights reserved

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