In Their Words: Peggy O'Neal

And when you became president in 2013, what did you believe Richmond Football Club was supposed to represent beyond winning football games?

Well, I'd been on the board for eight years by that time.

And we had started, I think, the trajectory upward.

We had been in finals.

2013 was our first year in a while.

And you could see things were starting to come together.

I was there when Brendan Gale and Damian Hardwick were both hired in the same month.

Yeah.

In 2009, there'd been a lot of hard work and some wonderful leadership by the previous president, Gary March, in saying, we have a chance if we can just work together as a group.

And he encouraged me to think about becoming president.

Did you know what

president was then? No.

Well, yes, I'd been on the board, but I figured out what the board did by then.

So I thought that we've got to figure out what it is that we need to do to win football games because that's what the business is.

But along the way, we need to sort of have an identity of some kind.

We need to figure out what the club stands for.

And I always thought while you're waiting to win games, you need to make your members proud of other things that you do.

And to his credit, Brendan – And the entire time we were working on a strategy for the club, he always insisted community be a part, one of the pillars of that strategy.

And so little by little and with the great people he hired in the executive and the great people who came onto the board, we were like-minded about let's have our members participate.

see something of themselves, but also see something that they want to be proud of and that they would like to get behind as what the club is doing.

So I thought we need to win football.

We need to be a good citizen and we need to stand for something that is for the common good of our community.

Wonderful.