There's a joke getting around Collins Street, where the worlds of AFL football and commerce so often collide. It's that "old AFL executives never die, they just get a gig with Bastion". It's easy to see how it started.
The Bastion Collective, a marketing and advisory company founded by former AFL player Fergus Watts, has a board chaired by his father, Jim Watts, who was chief executive of St Kilda Football Club. Former AFL CEO Andrew Demetriou is on the Bastion board, as is Hamish McLachlan, the Seven sports commentator and brother of incumbent AFL CEO, Gillon McLachlan. Among the executive ranks at Bastion are Brian Walsh, the AFL's one-time media supremo, and Simon Garlick, the former boss of the Western Bulldogs.
The one-liner trades off what some perceive as a "boys club" that runs business and football in Melbourne, coupled with suspicion about how Bastion has grown so fast. Founded by Fergus Watts in 2009, at the age of just 23, with no staff and no office, Bastion now operates in Melbourne, Sydney, Shanghai, London and Los Angeles, and employs 165 people.
In recent times, the Bastion EBA sports marketing division has brokered deals between Nissan and Netball Australia, Rebel Sports and the Women's Big Bash League, and vitamin giant Blackmores and the Australian Open. Against a backdrop of its AFL ties, it's easy to understand how murmurings of the company itself being a bastion of the AFL boys club started to emerge. But, dig a little deeper, and the depiction proves to have little foundation.
"I think a lot of people around Melbourne don't actually understand what Bastion is," says Watts. "But I like the fact there is some ambiguity about it, because that allows us to be anything we want."
It's worth noting that Bastion isn't such a boys club after all. Women make up five of the 12 person executive team. In addition, sports marketing makes up just 20 per cent of Bastion's annual revenue, which is approaching $25 million per year.
About 45 people work for Bastion EBA, which is run by Fergus' brother Jack. A further 120 are employed across eight other divisions, which range from publicity, digital marketing and live events to government relations and reputation management. Clients include McDonald's, IGA supermarkets and Mirvac.
Originally, the only thing Fergus Watts wanted was a job that didn't require a suit and tie. He found that first in football. A first-round draft pick by Adelaide in 2003, he was drafted in the first-round again by St Kilda a few years later, when he wanted to return to Melbourne. A broken leg sustained early in his first season with the Saints pretty much ended his promising AFL career.
"My football career has been ridiculously well profiled for someone who only played six games," Watts says. "As a kid I had a dream to be an AFL footballer and that career amounted to six matches. Emotionally, I have broken all that down now and got through it, but it has been quite a journey."
After football came a stint with an advertising firm. "I took the job because I didn't have to wear a suit and it looked fun," Watts says.
The key lesson Watts learnt from advertising was that he loved doing deals. "I was interested in how a deal goes together and how individuals interact and make something happen," Watts says. "I realised the only way I could keep doing that was to be at the very top of a business, and the only way you can do that as a 23-year-old is to start one yourself."
Since then, the deals have come thick and fast, mainly via acquisitions and establishing new divisions . At the start of last year, Watts moved his family to London to build Bastion's European outpost. There is a mergers and acquisitions venture in Los Angeles, and a growing China advisory business.
It all makes for a global headquarters in Richmond, where Bastion staff are given incredible flexibility in their work hours.
"I have never understood office hours," says Watts. "Kids need picking up at 3.30pm, and phones and email mean we are constantly connected. Corporations and employers are asking more of us all the time, so why can't we go and see a movie at 2pm on a Tuesday, if that suits our work-life balance?
Talk like that is about as far away from the "AFL boy's club" as one can get.
One thing that hasn't changed, it seems, is that Watts is still trying to find careers for 23-year-olds. To that end, he is back in Melbourne to undertake the "Bastion Degree", a training program to help develop staff. He is one of 20 to undertake the degree this year within the company.
"It came because I believe we need to build better people within Bastion, Watts says. "But, to be brutally honest, it's also partly because every Millennial now leaves after two years and that costs a lot of money. One of the reasons Millennials chop and change jobs is that, after about 18 months, they are too good for their current job, but not yet good enough for the next job, so they quit. Part of this course is getting staff to bridge that gap, developing the emotional intelligence, so I can put them in that next job sooner."
The course is one full day a month for six months, plus homework and self-development tasks to be completed in between. Staff must sign a contract, committing to completing of the degree and remaining with Bastion for 18 months. If they leave before that time, they are asked to repay the company for the cost of the degree.
"The principle is, if you commit to us, we will commit to you," says Watts.
Maybe the AFL links have had some impact at Bastion after all – it's a line that could have come straight out of an AFL locker room.