By Jake Niall
If taking over the helm of major university is quite different to holding the same position at the Richmond Football Club, Peggy O’Neal - the first woman to be president of an AFL club - can see strong parallels between her new role at RMIT and the Tigers.
“A football club and a university are both significant institutions based in community and are there to serve and to build those communities,” O’Neal said following her appointment as the next Chancellor of RMIT University.
“I see great similarities.”
O’Neal broke the mould in the AFL on numerous counts. She was the first woman to be president of the AFL club, and she also was American-born and raised, having gone to a Tigers game as an expatriate American more than 30 years ago, when she was immediately stricken with yellow-and-black fever.
Peggy O’Neal will replace Ziggy Switkowski as chancellor of RMIT University.Credit:
Born in the remote town of Killarney in the mountains of West Virginia, O’Neal, a lawyer and long-time partner (1995-2009) at another noted Australian institution - Herbert, Smith Freehills (always known as “Freehills”), ascended to the Richmond presidency as a compromise candidate, when two men on the board, Mal Speed, the former boss of Cricket Australia, and Maurice O’Shannassy, were slugging it out to take the role.
O’Neal was promoted by Gary March, her predecessor, as an alternative to the two bulls in the paddock in 2013. Her period as president has coincided with Richmond’s renaissance as a competition powerhouse, the Tigers winning their first premiership in 2017 and then following with back-to-back flags in 2019 and 2020.
Richmond insiders say that O’Neal’s leadership has been crucial in the club’s reinvention, particularly in the troubled year of 2016 when the Tigers conducted a thorough review of their under-performing football department - they’d finished 13th - and made the critical decision to retain coach Damien Hardwick while changing his lieutenants and support staff. The Richmond review, conducted by chief executive Brendon Gale, indeed, has become a template for other AFL clubs, such as Collingwood and then Carlton.
Brendon Gale with Peggy O’Neal.Credit:Eamon Gallagher
“She’s outstanding from a governance perspective,” said one Richmond insider, who said “Peggy” - as she’s always known at Punt Road - has been a calming influence on the club throughout her time at the helm.
O’Neal has offered clubs a different model of leadership to the more aggressive and high-profile presidencies of Eddie McGuire, Jeff Kennett and David Koch, since she’s been content to let Gale, a renowned former player, be the public face of the Tigers.
“Being chair of any organisation means guiding the board to work with management to give effect to the strategic plan,” O’Neal told The Age, when asked about how her Richmond role would be relevant to RMIT, where she takes over as Chancellor in the new year.
O’Neal wasn’t simply the first woman to break the glass ceiling at AFL clubs, she was also at the vanguard of a trend; by 2021, the two grand final teams, Melbourne and the Western Bulldogs, each had female presidents and clubs were increasingly governed along Richmond lines: with clear roles, boards stacked with lawyers, accountants and corporate executives in which the days of meddling in recruiting and football matters were long gone.
O’Neal holds a number of board positions - Women’s Housing Ltd, Dementia Australia Network, VicHealth and from 2017-2020 she was a member of Victoria’s Ministerial Council on Women’s Equality, she is chair of Vanguard Superannuation, a director of Infrastructure Specialist Asset Management Limited. She was awarded an honorary doctorate from Swinburne University and an Order of Australia in 2019.
None of those gongs or titles, however, carry the same weight in this town as the fact that she was at the helm when the Tigers won the 2017, their first in 37 seasons, and followed on with two further flags under the same coach whose position she and Gale had preserved.