Episode 3: “Football Desperately Needs Leaders”: Geoff Lord’s Brutal A-League Assessment

Welcome to Unfiltered by Soccer Scene, where the real conversations in Australian football happen. No scripts, no spin, just the truth. This is where industry leaders, decision makers, and custodians of the game speak openly about the challenges, opportunities, and future of football in this country. Proudly brought to you by Zapparis Lawyers, backing the game and the people in it when it matters most. Let's elevate the debate. Today, we're joined by Jeff Laud, founding chairman of Melbourne Victory, former president of fourth on football club, and a leading figure in Australian sport and business through his work with Bob Gravia Group. Few people have operated across both football and the AFL at that level, so he brings a really unique perspective on where the game is at and where it needs to go. You've had success across business and sport, as you've just said, what originally drew you specifically to football and the creation of Melbourne Victory? Thank you for having me, first of all, I love sport, and sick of me. I'm a commercial man, a businessman, and the opportunity of combining both has always been attractive to me. Today, not only do we have had the time at AFL and soccer at football, but we also have a WNBL team in Toronto and we are now putting a national hockey team in to be called the conference. There's a combination of my love of sport and my commercial interests. I've finished at Hawthorne, everybody has their use by date. So, mine had run out and I'd finished at Hawthorne. It was a great time at Hawthorne through the 80s. So, as during my time on the board, we won five premierships in eight years. I thought it was a fairly good effort, it was a big buzz, and very exciting. After a couple of years, I was out of that, and Frank Lowe, who was a colleague of mine, knew reasonably well, was looking to start the A-League and they couldn't find somebody who was prepared to take on the Melbourne sponsorship or the Melbourne ownership. I rang him one day and said, "We're interested in doing it on two conditions." One was that no second team came into the competition from Melbourne for five years, and two was that the FFA would underwrite any losses we had over that five-year period. The first one he readily agreed to, the second one he nearly choked on his porridge, I think, with the idea that they would be on their hook for any losses, as it turns out, victory never lost any money through the six years I was there. So, it wasn't an issue, but Frank took a long time to decide. Anyway, this is on the telephone, on the phone, and at the end of the discussion, which were about 45 minutes, he said, "Okay, Jeff, we're back here. You can have it." Now, at that stage, I had a business called Bell Gravia Leisure, and I could use some of the leisure people to help facilitate the new licence. People like Gary Colm, who had a background in football. So, you cross you live some people, and I thought we could cut some costs that way, but it's a very interesting story. When we took it on, there was no club called Melbourne Victory. Nothing had the name Melbourne Victory. There was no ground. We had no facilities. We had no colours. We had no players, and we had no management. It was starting from scratch. So, totally from scratch, not like inheriting a club, like South Melbourne Hellers, for example, and then upgrading Hellers who had an ambition to be in the A-League. Not like doing that, we started from nothing. The rub was, the Frank said, "You can have the licence if you get a team on the field in six months." So, the preparation was six months. Wow. We went and got two name players, firstly, given Muscat, who was interested in coming back to Australia, and Archie Thompson. And together with them, we advertised for coaches and worked with them to find a coach. And Ernie Merricks took that role. And so, we were off to a start. The name, Big Tree, came from really the concept of the old AFL state team called Victoria, with a big, a blood dark blue jumper and a big white V on the jumper. So, Big Tree was a little bit of play on Victoria. And we wanted to be Victoria, so obviously, so that fitted in with what we were doing. And, great. So, we appointed a general manager from the leisure group. First, a general manager was a fellow called Darren Gosling. And so, he was doing two jobs. So, made him stay at his current job and do this part time. And we identified an opportunity to go to the Melbourne Rayhound Race Track at Olympic Park and play inside the AWVL. So, we were set about recruiting players, and Philly at the coaching panel under Ernie. And we spoke a little bit of money and had no idea, absolutely no idea whether we would get any of the funds back. Day one, game one was a nervous wreck. But it sold out, game sold out, the ground sold out, that game. And we won that game. And then, since then, we started in year one, we had a very good first half of the season. Because we had an in-depth squad, we fell away towards the end of the year. Really, I think, through lack of preparation and lack of depth and fittest, I think, second bottom for that year. In the off time, I suggested to Ernie that he takes his squad and is coaching the support, and they go up to Cape Tribulation in the north in that difficult tropical climate and bond by working together for 10 days. And also, improving their fitness, we'd added a few players to the squad. And they do that. And they came back from North Queensland. And we won our further-sade games in year two. And as you would know, we won the grand final at year six zero in front of 55,000 people. And I thought to myself, well, you know, you've proved something that you can do these things. I think the grand final was that day night. And I think I got home about Wednesday. It was enormous. That's an incredible turnaround from the just in one year. Yeah. It was something that could be great pride in a way. You're having achieved it. But remember, the achievement comes from the players on field and the coaching squad who were to get the players right. But I think, for me, I felt from a business angle or from an objective angle, we've achieved something quite unique. I stayed there for another four years, and we won another two-penance, two silverware. So we ended up with three pieces of silverware over the six years, adding that to the Hawthorne's five out of ten, gave us about eight out of six three. And I thought I'm pushing my luck here. I better have it retire. And I had a wife. I have a wife who's still had the same wife. And she said, I've been going to 40 functions AFL or soccer, football functions for 16 years. That time I had a break. So I had a respect to her. I'll retire from a Melbourne victory. Beautiful. That's an incredible story. And thank you for giving all the details as well. As founding Chairman of Melbourne Victory, what did you think the ALE needed to get right in its early years and do you think that it did that? Well, what do you need in my opinion is a a virus competition that's very competitive, but very colorful. And I think the idea of setting up 8 and then 10 teams was the right structure, having a national structure with the right structure for the game. I think in year 1 and 2 there was enormous goodwill around the game to be played in Australia because it hadn't been played at a national level. I think over a period of time though, the leaders of the game lacked vision. And so the colour that was there in year 1 and year 2 slowly abated, slowly disappeared. And I think it was lack of foresight and lack of implementation more than the game itself and more than the structure of a national league. I still believe the game is a wonderful game internationally. It's one of the few sports where you can build an international career. It's a game that should be definitely high in the list of sporting priorities in this country for kids. And I think that we've failed to build on the initial early years because of lack of vision and lack of leadership. And I'm quite critical of this and I'll give you an example if I may. After I retired from big tree, a couple of years later, I went to, I was in the UK and I went to Ireland to see the club Celtic. I convinced them to come to Australia and have a look at an opportunity about building their brand in this country. We agree that it would be a 50/50 joint venture and I thought bringing Celtic or clubs like that to the Australian league would start to recreate interests and recreate the colour. Celtic are a major sporting organisation around the world, not just in football but in basketball as well, for example. We agreed, Celtic and we agreed, I'd drive them around all the new suburbs where the growth was happening, like I had a pack of them all very cool wherever. And we thought, no, you're great, we wrote an agreement, 50/50 agreement. Now, I had had some success with creating big tree obviously and big tree being a very strong club, Celtic on the other hand, the best one on the leading branch in the world. So then we took this to the FFA and they knocked it back and knocked it back on the ground so we didn't have our own stadium and yet there wasn't even our intention, our intention was to play all of our games in capital cities, both home and away games in capital cities around Australia and create a Celtic club in each one of those states in each one of those cities. I thought it was a great vision, it's the sort of thing that today, forget about me, today the ADLE should be trying to create your names, create more colour, create more competition. Instead, we've managed to lose the television coverage and the rights, we've managed to lose really, or not expand the game by bringing in more clubs. We haven't put in a relegation promotion system to allow junior clubs to come up through the A-League and I just think it's a lack of planning and the lack of foresight by the leaders in the game that really stand so badly. Now, on a national basis, you can argue and it is a fair argument that however we've made the World Cup in the last four times and that in itself is an achievement. There are so many changes we can make to the structure of the game, not the rules of the game, the structure of the game, to improve the sport, you know, it's just a pity that I think that leadership has failed the game. We've touched on a lot of aspects of it which we will definitely dive into further, but firstly, on the governance and leadership aspect, you've led both businesses and clubs. What's the biggest difference between running a company and running a football club? Not a lot, you know, a lot of ways, a bit in the end, you're recruiting people to identify with an end goal, football is to be successful in the field and create on the field and create support of the field. Business, you have an objective and that's to achieve certain goals and you recruit people for both and then it's about managing those people in a way to coordinate them to achieve the goals and be said, football and business has to be very goal oriented and then you have to pursue those goals with ruthless and I think that's common to both levels of sport. Again, I've been asked after about the difference between AFL and soccer football and the objectives of the same, to build a club, to build it successfully and his victory that in the early days, as you know, we would draw 30,000 to a game. The grand final in year two was in front of 55,000. We should have played at that night at the MCG and we would have got 85,000, however those goals were created and I think achieved quite well. But again, victory of loss sort of some of those goals and that's cost pressure as well. And the first five years of victory, when I was there, six years with me, we never lost a betty, not one betty last year, I think last two years, victory's lost 20 million. And it makes you really sit down and think about why and I'm not looking at that. It's a great club, but I think it hasn't gone on and built on the early momentum. Why is that? Again, I say that it's about leadership and about vision of creating something unique. And what do you think football, as you just said, so you never lost a penny at your time that worked? What do you think it is in football that they still misunderstand about financial sustainability that maybe you're someone who's won? Well, the first problem of course is that every football club needs to recruit talent. And it's a competitive game to recruit talent. And the way they're stunned today is by offering more money to a player to go to club A than to go to club B. So the clubs do the damage to themselves. And they have better each other on talent, on potential talent, as that cost element that is the reason why clubs are unprofitable and the game is therefore suffers as a consequence. The solution to me, which is only a paper entry, a paper number, is to limit and police properly the level of salary cap. And I don't think really the argument of saying we could be better, the game could be better by having higher price players is a valid argument. I would argue that the game has gone itself into a mess by having clubs have been in each other on talent. And by implementing a rule, we could cut the cost of the game, probably the cost of the game, probably in half. Now, does that mean that we'd be sat on some of that great talent or some of the names that are there? No, it doesn't, because in the end, even if they were lesser players when they start more junior players when they start and pay less, in the end, they'll become names and identified to supporters and followers. And that's the first thing that I would do. The second thing is the use of media, and it's clear that television media in Australia is a band of the game, and my solution, a game, would be to run our own television station. So it's strong enough big enough, and enough people would love the game to have been able to do that. And I don't understand why that was never done. Today, it's still essential. The third thing is sponsorship, and sponsorship as well so far enough quite a bit, and that's probably because of the lack of active marketing by the individual clubs who market against each other. I believe that there's a better way of doing that by marketing the game before the clubs in the front of the clubs and then dividing the kitty or the pool up between the clubs. And it's about supporting the sport itself rather than individual clubs. Once you have that initial pool, you can then start branching out into local club marketing, but I think the foremost point is to maximise the size of the pool. There's some very good insights. And do you believe that Australian clubs are true to pep and on private ordinance? No, it's irrelevant really. The only reason, and I suppose I was a private owner, but the only reason that it goes to private ownership is because it believes that the private owners have the money to support the game. So that's not a negative in itself, it's become reliant on certain individuals putting money in and it needs a broad end of pace. But being a member owned club versus a privately owned club, I believe, is immaterial. It's about those objectives that you have for the club and the ability to achieve those objectives. Should clubs be run more like community assets or private enterprises? I know. Well, given by answer, it's the same as the previous question. That in the end, all of the assets affect the answer to the members, not the private owners. And that's the way it should be. You need band engagement, gain initially when we started the tree and remember I knew nothing about soccer. I'd still been out a lot, but we were well endorsed by private groups, collective groups within the Melbourne fabric, like the West End or like community areas. And I think that was fantastic. And that's why we did sort of draw 25, 30,000 people a game. And the Melbourne was at Melbourne between us a big drawing club. You can then question why we let a second side into Melbourne. And it may be that that's in some ways this week of big tree, but it's probably strengthened the game. And that's a good thing to have and to get competitive rivalry between two local clubs for the Darby is important as well. So Melbourne City have had it to it, Western United and I think for decision, I don't understand what they were trying to achieve. Yes. Like you said, they were drawing bigger crowds and one of the reasons why is today lack of leadership not being as strong and not drawing as much of the crowds as what we will. What do you think would make the A League a more interactive investment today and what leadership would be needed to bring back those large crowds? Well, I think Frank Loewy was an individual gave a great leadership to the formation of the A League. Today, you tell me who run the A League and who is the key figure in creating interest in the game. Can you? Sorry. No, so that's really my point. And right today, a strong leader would change a number of aspects of the game. For some reason, the club is maybe not so much the club, but the FFA themselves would rather be a bureaucratic system that has strongly led system. It needs leaders, the game desperately needs leaders, whether they're putting money in or not, and it desperately needs vision. If I take in RL, I see a sample, then we could have a look at Peter Valendi's and he's rolling building the game in the latter years in the last 10 years. And I think that's the sort of leadership or respect towards Frank that all sports they are involved in other sports that are said. And strong leadership is an imperative for the games. And then we'll start to attract the media interests and a game. And if we go to racing, you'll notice that they've built their own television connections and communication, and that's something that the soccer and the A-League desperately need to do. I am critical of the way the game's run, and I think that other than new, nobody really cares about my views because I'm a different era. And that FFA never even asks anybody for ideas. They didn't even explore their selfie-card idea, which I think would have been a terrific thing. And if so do you get come here, then you could bet that Dr. Monsters or whoever other carbers would have followed it. We don't want an English-based look-alike league, but we do what the colour and the strength of certain overseas interests. And I think that we could create that quite easily, and it takes five minutes, I think, to improve the structure and the outlook for this game. Oh, yeah. We do care about European because the game was having a lot of success in your time, so it is definitely useful. Obviously, we've touched a lot on the A-League so far, but as Augustine, we do talk a lot about facilities, grassroots participation, and how we can support the future of the game. Through our Gravia Group, you've been wholly involved in community sport. How important do you believe that infrastructure is to footballs, bro? Oh, I think it's extremely important. But again, just let's start with the wrong impression. I have gone back into community sport through the acquisition of a group called OneSports who is a supplier to the game. I have new balance as a product in my group, in the Gravia Private Business, and new balance as starting to get involved with the game. We'll announce next in the month of May that we have just secured the rights to a leading English brand, who are a supporter supporter of a couple of the APL teams. Now, the reason why we're doing that is because it fits within our mantra of taking sport to the community and getting kids more active, it fits within that whole concept of supporting community, about community, soccer, and community sport generally. Our objective is always to get to a meeting kids a year with a view to making them more active. I believe that social media and screens are the best mix for kids, so I'm not saying that they shouldn't have access to them, but they need balance between that and activity. I believe that if we actually create ways that kids can be more active, then they'll be better mentally back balanced, and that's a plus. To great say, my generation sounded a couple of terrible things, and drugs is one, which we allowed, country by country, hard to hold back, but drugs are social media is another. So that game and that screen time is at least at the worst needs balance with activities, and we've got a kid's doing things, and that's one of my major objectives in my business life. That's a great mantra, really important, and that really should be at the heart of grassroots sports in those early years, developing passion for sports. In relation to football, we've done a lot of research and a couple of interviews on a show, if you're familiar with it in Australia, local councils and state governments actually under invest in football compared to other sports. What is your opinion on that, and why do you think that? The reason why it is is because they perceive a lack of popularity, but the Australian population is changing, and as more diaspora come here and more people from foreign countries come here and suddenly, the mix of the Australian population is changing, so sports like soccer. or we'll take a weird one, which I've just formed, the association called Cabardi from India. Then there are markets opening up for these new sports, but to do it, we need to go back and create the support to do it. And we'll just register Cabardi Australia. We are entering a team in the, in the Mitchell Shire. And during a team in the National Hockey League, or a men's team and a women's team, it will be Mitchell Shire has a very high Indian influence. 45% of the kids in primary schools in Mitchell Shire have an Indian origin. And so we want to build some sports there. We'll create two National Hockey teams. They'll be called the Cobras, Cobras B, Gay Indian, that Indian animal, Reptile. And we'll back it, victory will back it, in a way to build that and create something in that Shire. We can go and do that with other community sports. And I think it's essential that people of my ilk, I'm yesterday's man, not tomorrow's, need to make a contribution to those games and get junior sides participating underneath those senior bodies. And that's something that we're really committed to doing. One Midden Kids was a dream, but we're now approaching it because to the Midden, I think we're about 850,000. And Indian different walks of life. So if I take, I'm talking Bill Gravy in the house, you forgive me, but if I take Learn to Swim, which is a good thing to do. We've got 150,000 kids in Learn to Swim. We're in Gymnastics, we're in martial arts, we're in lots of other activities. And I think that's something that people have been successful in Australia need to contribute to. They can put back into building the future of Australia by making an effort and contributing to the general future and direction of Australia. Obviously, the fostering of the passion for sport in Indian and early age. And I think you said you're nearly at a million so providing those opportunities at an early age. Often times, particularly with football, we've heard that once you get that later stage, children drop off, how do you think that we better connect participation for children with professional pathways? - I think there's an happening at 14 or 15. Kids are dropping out of sport. The dropping out of sport, if they're dream by being a top sportsman, is being shattered. And the reason why the dream gets shattered is because we have in this country a system of elitism. And unless you're going to be part of the elite future stars in most sports, then you dream of, sort of disappears. So we are creating that elitism at two early in age. I think rather than a 12, 13-year-old missing out on certain funnels that take them to top of sports, which is the elitism that I'm saying. And this space from picking kids that I think will be future champions, unless you're part of that funnel, you become disillusioned. And that's why kids are dropping out. The best way is not to create the funnels until kids are 18 or some more mature age. How are you going to get that? Is it you won't get the excellence in those that look promising? But my vision, my view, is that we want all kids to dream that they can become champions in sport. I'm very proud to say today, I have nine grandchildren. And one of them, one of the nine, today's having his first Osuke session. So I don't know how he's gone. I know my son, but he went into Osuke at first, my oldest boy, I spent day one picking daisies on map on the field and trying to make a daisy chain, but he became quite a good sportsman. And so it'll be interesting with the grandchild. But we're going to get kids involved. We're going to stop the elitism pathway too early and keep kids dreaming about what they can't achieve. That's very true. That's actually a unique angle to that question. Moving towards, you're speaking before how there's some issues with the game structurally. I just want to take in your experience at Hawthorne to sort of provide a comparison. You were president of Hawthorne during one of its most successful errors. What did that club get right structurally, even not even just then, or today that Hawthorne talked about in Australia still hasn't? Hawthorne was never a money club. It never had a big reserve, today it is actually quite strong, financially. But in that era, it was never a financially strong club. But it had the objective or the view that money was there for one reason and that was to build success on the field. So we spent more time and trying to recruit players and recruit a squad and build a spirit within the club with those two factors were far more important than being financially strong. So any money we had as a surplus, we used to try to recreate something for the future. I think the beefing at Hawthorne was the spirit that was captured. Spirit wasn't captured by me, it was captured by a reputed at time by my predecessors. Hawthorne entered the AFL in 1925 and did not make a final appearance until 1957. So 32 years without one final game. But 1961 was its first premiership, and that's 36 years from the formation of the club. But they built this spirit, collective spirit within the club, and that far outweighs in my opinion, money. There was the bonding, the bonding again, which came from that spirit is ultra important. I think a victory we built a fantastic spirit and people understood why they were at victory. The wasn't for playing money, financial gain for players. It was about building a story which has become an history over time, and it was a building of a club which was far more important than the financial elements of Hawthorne went through that. They built something. What you gave to Hawthorne, Hawthorne would give you an exchange in a way, return on your effort or time or commitment to the club. And I think Hawthorne's been a great story. It's got stronger and stronger. The wheel has turned, financial is important. Now they've just built a very big home in Dingley. But and it's a good, sensible business move. But it is if we could capture that spirit and that commitment among both the players and the supporters and the administrators with that commitment to the one goal all the time that I think we can build clubs. We can build clubs in the Eilig. We could build them in, uh, uh, uh, Australian, um, representative teams. The women, the women's team has captured some of that spirit. They had a, they've had a wonderful 10 years and they've created and moved to a level bar in a band. So I think a band soccer now. A house of people will ring me up and will ring you up and say what nonsense is to all kick. But there is that spirit and they capture the support of the Australian public much score in that 10 years than the say Australian men's soccer has. You know, you're very right. We've actually had written a lot of articles and had a lot of people talking about trying to emulate the success of the midfielders. And I think spirit, it's not something that you can force and it's very crucial to the success of a club. Do you think that spirit is the key thing [BLANK_AUDIO] we're looking at on the level of a league, like the AFL system consistently produced stable high performing clubs, whilst ALE clubs are often struggling for sustainability. Do you think it's spirit across a league, or is it something different? It makes more than just the spirit, but the spirit is a sadding point. That goes back to what we talked about before about having clear objectives, or all sources of players, the administrators, the supporters, with an effort to build that. I think Bert Big Tree captured that very well in the first six years, but I've been and has lost quite a lot of that. Now, that's not being critical for you, Big Tree people, and listening, not being critical of the club and see opposite. I love the club, and I would love to see that rebuilt. But to me, that building spirit is not there at the moment. So what do we change? We're trying to get leaders who can communicate, and they can understand the objectives. We try to take within reason, try to take some money out of the game by changing the salary cap levels in the sport, and we start playing younger people and younger teams, and we start playing under 21 top cops that are build up to the game, and make a number of changes to the way that we go forward. Otherwise, if Australian soccer doesn't do that, then it's going to get left further and further behind. You already see New Sports coming into the game. There's my phone, so there's a first Big Tree fan. You ring after abuse me. But I'm interested in tomorrow. And to create tomorrow, you have to put the right building blocks in place. And I don't think the bright building blocks are being put there. You did mention before, as well as those reasons earlier, you said strengthening media presence, which I also believe would be crucial. Why do you think the AFBAL has been so successful at driving forward cast value compared to football in Australia? It's a really good question, but it's been longer. The bread hasn't been wrong. It's much longer time. And the concept of tribalism is the perturbing link in the building of the code, so that people grew from a neighbourhood and supported and neighbourhood. And that's sort of out now. Of course, not just Melbourne say, but Victoria and then Australia word. And the nationalisation of a strong game has been good. But also, they're both great stadiums. They also control, if you like, the media input. And something that has helped them build and popularise the game, I think the lack of aggression at the FFA level in controlling the media is a really should. And for the episode to lose the support, certainly in your organisation is a big supporter of the game. And that's a very good thing. But we need more of that. But we also need to be able to build at least our own television station and media outlets and go back and set clear objectives about how we get to build the whole competition and the whole presence of football shocker in Australia. And you mentioned before, you know, sort of stems from that tribalism that may bring with the growing diaspora's and obviously shocker being an international team. How do we create that national identity for the game? What would be the cultural identity of football now with the growing immigrant population? Well, I think growing participates. Yeah, as a series we talked about before the Australian population is changing. And one of the considerations might be that do you think about national financing based themes in the Australian League? So it's a little bit contrary to some of my beliefs. But with a lot more Indians coming here, I suppose it's the reason why we're saying what are we putting an Indian source to Indian connected themes into the Australian hockey league? Well, maybe there should be that thinking of putting in English themes or putting in Irish themes or German themes or South American themes where there's an influence and an identity with the local brands. So maybe there's scope for a marriage to join the ethnicity and the neighbourhood connection in trying to create that again. I raised a Celtic thing as a perfect example of what I would not do in running a national competition. You said yourself, you're all about looking forward. So finishing off with some forward looking question, you briefly covered this just then, but if we were to just define what success looks like for Australian football in the next 10 to 15 years for the marriage generation. There has to be this channel to keep younger, I think progressively under eight sides leading up to, so running under six turns under 21 and building that channel, there has to be some blending of the local interests with international interests and alliances and there has to be, I think, some way of sourcing or owning their own media input into the game. Australia needs to play in more international leagues, competitions, even if it's a local Asian competition, not local, but Asian. And I think that we should actually change the Australia lead to become a Asian based league with Australia and the clubs in the individual clubs playing in that Asian league. And I think we've got to bring back promotion and relegation and so that people can aspire to build the club. So there's a lot of changes. It's easy just to sit here in isolation, not understanding the constraints or the financial picture, but the game needs big thinkers. If they don't have big thinkers and leaders, then it ain't going anywhere. Are you optimistic about the future of football? Yes, I'm optimistic because it is a great game, although to be quite fair with you, I had to ask in my first press conference as I was walking into the game and we were in a team, there's so much I knew about the game, but I've learned to love the game and the game itself is a terrific game. It just needs leaders. Beautiful. Well, those are all my questions. Thank you for your answers. Was there anything else that you wanted to touch on? No, I love doing the interview. I'm quite happy to give my time to sport wherever I can, but again, I go back to my overriding objective, just to make kids more active. Thank you, Grant Sutton, for being at your first CFL cheek this morning. Yes, first I'll speak quickly. I'll speak tomorrow, this morning. So thank you, Harlan, and thank you for the interview. I've enjoyed it. Beautiful. Thank you for your time and your insight.