Photography: The Man in Black
Feature: Michael Gordon
Rugby League Player. October 2010.
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Best of Sydney 2010
Alternative Media Best of Sydney Awards
City Hub. 19 August 2010
Contributor/reviewer food, entertainment, lifestyle.
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Gorden Tallis
Feature: Gorden Tallis
Rugby League Player. August 2010.
Pages 64-65
Wise isn’t usually a word used to describe Gorden Tallis. But in his newest incarnation as a forwards coach for the South Sydney Rabbitohs, he’s surprisingly philosophical.
He’s been coached by the biggest names in Australian rugby league - “it’s like the Oscars of coaches,” he says -and now, in his second year at Redfern, Gordie’s starting to refine his own approach to motivating the most high profile forward pack in the NRL competition.
“Originally, I was there to just tell them a few home truths; it’s developed from there,” he explains.
Gordie has found that the key to the Rabbitohs pack is to tap into each player’s instinctive game.
“I’ve learnt that everybody’s different: you can’t treat every forward like Glen Lazarus or Petero Civoneciva or Cameron Smith. Every player is an individual and I try to embrace what they bring naturally.
“Say, someone like Sam Burgess has this natural ability, and every week you see his natural ability shine. But then you’ve got to take off the rough edges, like pass selection, the mixes, telling him ‘I wouldn’t have run then, I probably would’ve looked for a pass.’
“Someone like Luke Stuart is fantastic. He doesn’t need a lot of coaching. He’s so professional in the way he goes about his work, and then you get someone like Eddy Pettybourne, who’s just got so much enthusiasm; if you add all those three together it’s a really good mix.”
But even as he’s talking about nurturing ‘the individual’, there are still glimpses of Gordie the Raging Bull that footy fans remember from the field.
“It’s not rocket science, is it? Our game hasn’t changed a lot over 100 years, and the principles that made a good player in 1927 are the principles that make a really good player today. I try to break it down and make it as raw as possible.
“There’s got to be the fire burning in a player’s belly, because potential only gets you so far. The fittest and strongest will survive, and if the penny doesn’t drop for a player there’s nothing you can do.”
“It took Sam Thaiday a while to realise this. I played with him, then six years later all of a sudden he doesn’t smoke and he doesn’t drink as much and he’s the best forward in the competition.”
It’s a kind of hands on involvement with rugby league that Gorden Tallis - surprisingly - isn’t known for. According to Gordie, “pretty much the only thing we don’t do now is lace them up and send them out on the field.”
It’s also a direct reminder for him of the effect of media coverage on a young player.
“The pressure that they have to deal with in the media, well that’s where I can help them, cause I’ve been there. I’ve been that guy that had to try to live up to what they called the Raging Bull, and I had problems with it, too.
“I keep on telling them there are going to be a lot of bad articles when they play badly - and everyone’s going to have bad games - but they’re not the guys who said they’re Souths’ saviours.
“Burgess hasn’t said ‘I’m gonna take Souths to a grand final’, Dave Taylor hasn’t said it. He got roped into saying that we’ve got a good forward pack, and probably one of the best ones in the NRL, but mate, I’m glad that he said it. I’m glad that he believes it.”
Gordie talks about belief a lot, and passion. It’s how he chooses which jobs to take, and it’s the first thing he mentions about South Sydney owner, Russell Crowe.
“This team is his passion, and you can sense it. There’s a bloke who’s passionate about his game. He’s hands on, he’s not just a Hollywood owner who wants his name up in lights. I’m lucky to have met him.”
And if he’s not known as a philosopher, Gordie’s certainly not talked up for his community work. Alongside his promotional trips for Fosters, his cameos in the insanely catchy VB ads, and his regular gig on Foxsports, he’s been a staunch supporter of Max Employment and its programs for unemployed youth.
While it’s not a glamorous project, it’s still an expensive one.
But out of a $250,000 program run recently for 15 kids in Sydney’s Macquarie Fields, 13 passed and are now employed. “And that’s so rewarding, he says.
“Kids that are leaving school, troubled youth, I really like working with them. I didn’t complete school, I grew up in a housing commission, so maybe I relate to them a little bit.
“But there are no excuses in life. They had to listen to us, they had to exercise, they had to get some self-esteem up.”
The time he spends working for Max Employment is one on a list of reasons why he doesn’t plan to make any greater commitment to coaching just yet, at Souths or any other club. He prefers the variety.
And for the foreseeable future, the goal at Redfern is to undo the damage done by South Sydney’s controversial exit from the league and build the Rabbitohs into serious premiership contenders.
“When Souths are playing at their best, we can match it with any side in the competition. It’s our job to make sure that our day is every Sunday.”
KIERA STEWART AND SARAH NEILL
Raiders Young Guns
Feature: Canberra’s Young Stars
Rugby League Player. August 2010.
Pages 80-81
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Women in League - SFX Sports
Feature: Women in League
Rugby League Player. August 2010.
Page 42
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Terror Twins
Feature: Mark Geyer and John Cartwright
Rugby League Player. August 2010.
Pages 24-25
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2009: The Year in Review
Feature: The Year in Review, 2009
Rugby League Player Yearbook. November 2009.
Pages 64-65
ANOTHER STORM PREMIERSHIP. SHOULD WE BE SURPRISED?
Globo Gym are the most consistent team of the new milennium. They’re better than you … and they know it. Except, of course, for Brett Finch. He was on the embarassing end of an unceremonious breakup with Parramatta midway through the season. Let’s not lie: he was dumped for a younger (and prettier) man.
Winning a premiership and beating your trophy wife competition to get it has to be the sweetest thing any footy player can hope for. It’s a Brett Finch Fairytale! And the Brett Finch Fairytale topped off what was a year of scandal, redemption, glamour, footy babies and damn good footy.
THE SCANDAL
It’s virtually impossible to talk league in 2009 without talking league scandal: Jason Taylor and his kung fu escapades, Greg Inglis allegedly getting his punch on, Brett Stewart and the NRL’s showpiece ad going up in smoke, Nate Myles and Brad Fittler’s corridor shenanigans, the Sharks just being the Sharks. It’s all so … tired. It’s probably shorter to cover what didn’t happen off the field in league this year. For one thing, on behalf of Jarryd Hayne, we would like to remind you all that no one shot at him with any kind of firearm this year. More importantly, the 2009 NRL season was INTERNATIONAL MANHUNT FREE.
We’ll put it out there that any year when a sporting code doesn’t have an international fugitive leaving in the dead of night and avoiding process servers is a good year. Glass half full, kids!
The scandal in the last twelve months has also been nothing if not educational. At least 99% of the metropolitan population is now aware of what the word ‘defecate’ means. Add to that the intellectual challenges of the McIntyre System, and rugby league now leads the world’s football codes in Making People Smarter.
THE REDEMPTION
Approximately twelve months ago, Kiki had an awkward run-in with Anthony Watmough. She found herself unexpectedly standing next to him at a fancy event, lost for words. Her solution? “So … Watmough. Remember when you played Origin? And you were really good?” He was, frankly, unimpressed.
Fast forward twelve months and Watmough was carving up the Queenslanders in Origin 2 and 3, and awarded second-rower of the year at the Dally Ms. Redemption, they name is WATMOUGH. Anthony, you can thank Kiki for your Dally M later.
Coincidentally, Jarryd Hayne also had a little run-in that refocussed him, lifted his game, and helped him smash Dally M player of the year … only his was with Jesus, not one of us. Other than that, the situations were pretty much identical, don’t you think?
But our highlight was watching NSW grasp one last victory in the State of Origin series. Sure they may not have won the series, but they did make sure the maroons didn’t get their end-of-series tropical holiday, and at least two Queenslanders were punched in the face. We all know that’s what really counts.
THE GLAMOUR
By ‘glamour’, clearly we don’t mean glamour. League’s inherent wrongness is one of our favourite things. If anything unfortunate, embarassing, or ridiculous can happen, it will happen to our code.
When, in any other code, has a player like Terry Campese reacted tp a bad penalty by cracking it and taking aim with a football at dean Young’s head? Surely the greatest moment so far in T.Camps’ career. At least until we send him that certificate for being the biggest five-eighth in the NRL. More importantly, in what other sport would a high-profile playmaker like Mitchell Pearce sustain a surprise allergic reaction to medical supplies and have to play an 80 minute game on national television with a giant swollen head?
Where else would a player like Ben Hannant be outed by the commentary team for leaving the field with the runs? ATTENTION VIEWERS, PLEASE BET RESPONSIBLY. ALSO, BEN HANNANT HAS TAP-ARSE!
The second the swine flu news story broke in Australia, we nodded and agreed: somehow, at some point, it was inevitable an NRL player would contract it. Congratulations to Ben Hannant for also being the first man to get swine flu in the history of Aussie sport.
THE ROOKIES
Jamal Idris won rookie of the year, and is without doubt the most huggable man in the NRL, but surely Daniel Mortimer was robbed … surely. If being a brilliant half, coming from a family that is rugby league’s answer to the Kennedys, and having completely dreamy eyes doesn’t qualify you for recognition by the league fraternity, then we beg you, what does? We’re hoping the grand final loss will keep him humble enough not to follow the David Williams path and lost his damn mind, start doing cheesy photoshoots in New idea, or forget how to hold the ball.
Sassy nearly died of joy to finally see a Real Bondi Junior - Tom Symonds - run out on the field as a rookie for her beloved Chooks, but almost before we knew it he was carried off a few rounds later with a broken arm. Is it because eastern suburbs juniors are an offence against nature and ill-evolved to live? Is it because rangas have brittle, brittle bones and break easily? That moment hurt her just as much as losing the beautiful Craig Fitzgibbon, saying goodbye to everyone’s favourite sexy ranga, Shane Shackleton, or the rumours of match-fixing did.
Kiki’s much-loved Dragons were rookies at playing consistently brilliant football, until it actually mattered and they pissed it all away. She has already sent her therapy bill to Dragons HQ, c/o Uncle Wayne.
THE REASONS WE KEPT WATCHING
You know you loved it. We’ve always seen footy as a delightful soap opera, and it seems the punters enjoy it, too. Despite the histrionics, it was a record year for NRL audiences.
And why not? Trent Barrett hit Greg Inglis in the face and satisfied every NSW fan’s shameful bloodlust. Mat Rogers and the boys from the Titans discovered Twitter, and it was awesome. Robbie Farah squared up on the Cowboys’ Anthony Watts in a scrum and proved he’s not just a mama’s boy with an eponymous kebab and jerseys so tight they give him visible nipples. Oh, no. Robbie has visible nipples and a mean uppercut. It also helped that Wendell Sailor existed. His dancing in front of a disapproving Jamie Soward, his bringing back the post-try celebration, and his apology to the crowd when he was dakked: the man is a legend.
We love you Rugby League, never ever change. Well, maybe just a little.
KIKI STEWART AND SASSY NEILL
Rich 200
Rich 200 25th Anniversary Flagship edition
BRW. 29 May 2008
Researcher and Writer
Public Face of the Law
Feature: Slater & Gordon
BRW. 22 May 2008
Pages 48-49
CASHED-UP CLASS ACTION SPECIALISTS REDEFINE THE LEGAL PARTNERSHIP AND EMBARK ON AN ACQUISITION AND EXPANSION SPREE.
It has been a year since Slater & Gordon became the world’s first publicly listed law firm, but it is unlikely that lawyer and managing director Andrew Grech will be throwing a party. He and the other directors have had other things to worry about.
“The listing, to be frank with you, is pretty incidental,” he says in answer to how the float has altered company culture and business practices. “It was never for us an end in itself. It was always for us only one more way of achieving what we wanted to achieve as a group.”
Instead it has been a catalyst in a broader overhaul begun in 2001 when the firm was first incorporated. The May 21 float last year netted a capital injection of $35 million and allowed the company to begin an ambitious course of acquisition and expansion that has returned revenues and profits beyond even the directors’ initial expectations.
The listing was also a path to running the law practice in a more democratic way than the traditional partnership model. “We had assembled a really talented group of people, and wanted to create a way for them to have the same opportunities for ownership that we did,” Grech says. “But we also realised that we’re in an environment where, for people to work collaboratively, we had to move away from the more traditional model which we feel encourages people to take quite a short-term view, operating quite independently of each other.
“In a partnership, it’s really about what fees [lawyers] generate and what clients they personally bring in rather than what role they play in the execution of a strategy for the whole of the practice.” The partners all received substantial stakes in the listing, with Grech and deputy chairman Peter Gordon both sitting on stakes valued at more than $89 million. But almost a quarter of employees are now also stakeholders through a shareholder plan.
Grech stresses that as an ownership and management structure the public listing places remuneration partially in the hands of the market, making it dependent on overall performance rather than concentrating the power to determine promotion and reward with a group of senior partners.
“There’s talk in some parts at the moment of people scaling down and not admitting any new partners. In a partnership if you know your income’s going to be less, you cull the number of partners. We wanted a business that allowed the rhetoric [of supporting lawyers’ careers] to become a bit of reality.”
It is a claim that mirrors the egalitarian way Slater & Gordon believes the organisation approaches the law and business in general. “What troubles us is the sense that sometimes we are viewed as though the business is all about one small group of people in charge,” Grech says. “We believe one of the strengths of the business is the group we’ve built around us. And if you look, we’ve built considerable wealth for a lot of people.
“Rather than the rhetoric about those things, we’d like people to judge us by what we actually do. The fact is our people are out there every day helping clients, that’s what they do. Whatever people might think of us, there’s no denying that we fill a real need in the community, and the community commitment of our people, I think, is absolutely unparalleled.”
Grech is referring to the class action law for which Slater & Gordon is famous - or infamous - from the watershed 1989 compensation award to miners affected by asbestos in the CSR Wittenoom blue asbestos mine to current cases centering on asset management firm Opes Prime, retail investors Centro and Westpoint Property Group.
With the additional reporting requirements and transparency of a listed company, as well as the capital injection from public investors, Slater & Gordon’s project and class-action workload is likely to ramp up even further.
The public company structure has raised the interest of domestic and international litigation funders, and Grech expects the shareholder class-action market to open up dramatically in the next year.
“They see us as having the competency and the scale now to be able to deliver the results that they need,” he says. “If you’re a litigation funder, one of the things that you’re very focused on is the capacity of those that are engaged by the clients to carry it out. Your investment really hinges on the competency and the capacity of the lawyers that are engaged.”
It will be helped, he believes, by a more receptive environment for class actions in Australia. “Now I think it’s widely recognised that class actions and group actions have a significant role to play as an economical way of redressing people’s legal rights. There’s a lot of hyperbole about about ‘an explosion of litigation’, but more informed commentators agree that grouping claims and sharing legal costs has got to be good for the client.
“I also think they see the private profession and the civil law system as a way of ensuring and essentially providing a significant deterrent for people to ensure that these things don’t happen in the first place.”
This month, Grech is overseeing what will be the company’s eighth acquisition in the past year - Secomb’s Solicitors of Footscray, western Melbourne. It will bring the company’s legal network to 26 locations with more than 500 staff and expertise in areas such as wills, probate, family law and wealth protection. Grech estimates that at any moment, the business is dealing with more than 12,000 individual, active clients.
Having set an original target of $65 million revenue for the 2008 financial year, Slater & Gordon has turned over more than $37 million in the first half and has adjusted its projections. Profits for the first half to December 2007 were almost $7 million.
Grech attributes much of the growth to expansion into regional areas, and an attention to providing commercial legal services to small and medium businesses that Grech believes have previously been priced out of top-tier legal firms.
“One of the things that running cases on a conditional-fee basis teaches you to do is run cases very cost effectively. We’ve been able to transfer those skills into the more traditional fee-for-service areas of commercial litigation and business transactional work.”
On the issue of a possible worsening US sub-prime crisis or credit crunch, Grech is unfazed.
“The stockmarket fluctuations are disconcerting. It would be less than honest for me to say that’s not a concern. But overall we take a long-term view on share price, and it’s just pleasing that the price remains above the listing price, notwithstanding any market volatility.”
The share price currently sits comfortably above the issue price of $1, an exception among newcomers on the ASX. Grech’s explanation is prosaic: “There’s hardly a relationship between the rate at which people get injured on the roads and the economic cycle, or even the rates at which people get injured at work.”
It should also do little to soften the scrutiny that Slater & Gordon’s directors have become so used to, with the market ructions likely to increase opportunities in their commercial law sectors and boost their profile even further.
“In fact, one of the things that attracts investors to our business is that in a way it’s counter-cyclical,” Grech says. “In the business law and commercial litigation area, we’re moving into a period with tightening credit where businesses are going to become distressed, and that tends to create legal problems. It creates a volume of litigation that drives work for firms that provide services in those areas.”
The company intends to continue its expansion. Client referrals from regional areas are growing “exponentially,” and the company that previously earned 98 per cent of revenue in Victoria now earns 40 per cent from other states. It is a strategy it believes will spread risk as most personal injury legislation, in particular, is state-based. There are also plans to corner a larger piece of the $700 million-a-year personal-injury market by providing local legal services.
But don’t expect any change in attitude. “It’s not as though we’re unused to being criticised,” Grech says. “The legal profession has its share of petty enmities. It has been new territory, a listed law firm, but business has been growing across all areas, and our strategy is pretty clear. We’ll continue supporting organic growth.”
SARAH NEILL
A Model Profession
The Business End, Engineering: A Model Profession
BRW. 03 April 2008
Page 57
THE SHORTAGE OF ENGINEERS IS SO DIRE THAT INDUSTRY BODIES ARE CHASING PRIMARY SCHOOL CHILDREN.
The next crop of engineers with the potential to effectively counteract Australia’s dire skills shortage may not have taken a single high school science class yet. Engineering bodies are trying to find new ways to engage the next generations of engineering talent − including focusing on primary school students.
“One of the issues for our industry has been the move away from what are seen as the ‘hard’ maths and sciences and towards the humanities over a long period of time,” the chief executive of the Association of Consulting Engineers Australia, Megan Motto, says.
“We’d like to see the whole process of that turned around right from the primary school age. We would suggest that the teaching of maths and science needs to be a little more innovative.”
While university graduate numbers have remained relatively stable over the past decade, the demand for private−sector engineering expertise has continued to rise steadily. Motto says that increasing the number of engineers working in Australia under section 457 guest−worker visas and the skilled migration program to bridge this gap is a vital short−term priority, but the most important step will be for Australia to lay the foundation to secure higher graduate numbers in the field over the coming decades.
The Re−Engineering Australia Forum is working to hook primary students on engineering. The group already runs the successful F1 in Schools program, where teenage students design carbon dioxide−powered miniature formula one racing cars. Each year’s competition involves 300,000 Australian teenagers and others from
overseas, and lets them use industry−standard engineering software to design their entries.
REA launched Junior F1 this year as an introduction to F1 in Schools, aiming this time at the imagination of primary−level students. Children from the age of five work with Cosmic Blobs, a three−dimensional design program that allows them to manipulate shapes to design formula one vehicles and place them in virtual environments.
In Junior F1, students are able to see and hold their designs. REA invites children to email their designs for the vehicles and returns a scale model manufactured with the REA’s own prototyping equipment. For most it will be a rare first−hand experience of the connection between the digital design process and a finished product.
Motto agrees that this understanding of the practical aspect of engineering is central to attracting children to the industry. “One of the great benefits of engineering as opposed to most of the other professional services is that you can actually see what you did at the end of the day. You can walk through the door of the building; you can cross over the bridge. It’s a very tangible career.”
The ACEA has already begun its push to demystify engineering as a career to secondary school students, launching the 20−minute Design Your World film on DVD last year to show teenagers what an engineer can produce. “Most kids know what a doctor is, they know what a lawyer is, they even know what a forensic scientist is,
but they still don’t really know what an engineer is,” Motto says. “It’s a great misconception in schools that engineering is about being down a mineshaft, being a train driver.”
At least one copy of the DVD sits in every secondary school in Australia, but Motto says that to succeed in producing more engineers, this kind of education needs to be complemented by initiatives at the primary school level.
ACEA is also keen to redress the reduction in practical science and maths activities in the average Australian primary school. “Ultimately, we’d like to see more experimental learning to get children enthused,” she says. “We’d even like to see more parental involvement in the teaching of science. The same way you have a reading group once a week, we’d like to see parents come in and assist with supervising the kids in experimental learning.”
Motto sees this as vital, and it will be the central theme of the ACEA’s discussion and lobby work with school and parent groups in the second half of this year. “The number one influencer of subject selection and career choice is still parental,” she says.
Motto is satisfied with the response the program is getting from primary school students, but proof of success is at least five to 10 years away. “The response has been really fabulous, but the real test of the matter will be if it translates to subject selection and whether people are taking more science subjects and then going into engineering at university.”
SARAH NEILL
