Steven Trigg should resign, and by not quitting he's just going to keep damaging his club, writes Craig Cook.

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STEVEN Trigg should resign as chief executive of Adelaide Football Club.

The fact he hasn't already is more an indictment of his board than it is the man.

Mr Trigg must surely know he should be gone. It's what happens to leaders when everything turns to confetti - that's the way the world over. Continuing to resist that unwritten rule is damaging the club.

I'm not saying that, as captain Trigg, he should go down with the ship - I'm saying the Crows' ship won't stop sinking until he leaves.

I've never met Steven Trigg but anyone who has played for Central District Football Club begins in credit with me. He was no champion. Indeed, I remember the taunts of hard-nosed Bulldog supporters suggesting the lad from St Peters College wasn't going to cut it in the rough, tough northern suburbs.

But the club saw enough to appoint him co-captain in 1983 and made him sole leader the year after.

It was his first public leadership role but it didn't last long. He left Central two years later, and joined North Adelaide, after an acrimonious dispute over a contract.

Outside of football, Mr Trigg spent five years as a senior schoolmaster at St Peters until becoming human resources and administration manager of Lloyd Helicopters from 1991-1996.

His return to football, as senior coach of Sturt in trying times, was a flop and he left at the end of his second season in 1992.

Mr Trigg should be media-savvy because he has spent the good part of a decade dabbling in its varying mediums.

He was an ABC sports presenter for 10 years, a presenter of the Channel Nine home improvement show Building Ideas for three years and was a sports writer for this newspaper from 1993-1996.

The next year he joined the Adelaide Football Club as membership and communications manager and was appointed CEO in 2001.

He has served the club with distinction but he should by now be seeking his next appointment.

Mr Trigg knows his time has gone, just as he would have known Matt Rendell's tenure at the Crows was over the moment Mr Rendell confirmed he had suggested recruitment officers, including himself, might begin to overlook a player of Aboriginal heritage who did not have one white parent.

Mr Rendell fell on his sword "in the best interests of the club" and Mr Trigg must do the same over the Kurt Tippett affair.

On the very best presentation the Crows' chief executive has, in my view, failed to give a full and satisfactory account about what happened. The club repeatedly dodged questions about the existence of an agreement, detailed in a letter with Mr Tippett's manager, allowing him to one day seek an easier passage to his club of choice.

It was only when there was genuine concern the written communication was on its way - or had found its way - to AFL House did Mr Trigg rush home from holiday and spill all the beans to his chairman Rob Chapman.

Mr Chapman is championing his chief executive and leading the charge to hold on to him once he has served his six-month banishment. He is clinging to Mr Trigg like a limpet to a rock and is even prepared to hold down his job while he's on an enforced sabbatical.

Mr Chapman says Mr Trigg has the full backing - not that they've all been canvassed - of "every player, every staff member, every coach, every sponsor and every vice-president".

Tellingly, he didn't mention his board. It is known two of nine board members were prepared to vote to dismiss Mr Trigg if he didn't choose to resign.

It is reassuring there are two people at the Adelaide Football Club who understand their responsibilities.

Mr Chapman and Mr Trigg chose the 5AA Footy Show for their "tell-all" exclusive recently.

Their inquisitors were hosts Graham Cornes and Stephen Rowe who didn't happen to mention they are both official ambassadors of the Adelaide Football Club.

Let's just keep it all in-house guys and blithely move on from the fact Mr Trigg pleaded guilty to three charges, the AFL Commission fined him $50,000 and, in racing parlance, "warned him off" from any involvement with the AFL competition for a hefty 12 months, with six months suspended.

Those sanctions have stung, especially as Mr Trigg regards them as harsh and unjustified. The loss of his dream job will hurt far more but resigning is all that is left.

It should not mean Mr Trigg's next appointment won't be as a high-profile executive at a major corporation or sporting organisation. He is clearly a man with excellent administrative talents and positive personality traits who would be a boon to any business.

For the sake of the most fundamental corporate governance, it simply cannot continue to be with the Adelaide Football Club.

Originally published as Cook: Captain Trigg will sink the Crows