A stitch in time saves nine.
When we broke the news on our social media platforms on Thursday afternoon that Perth Glory great Adam Taggart was set to depart the club and head overseas to join Harry Kewell’s Hanoi FC, the reaction among fans was one of genuine shock and frustration.
Taggart’s departure, in isolation, shouldn’t necessarily constitute a crisis. He was approaching the latter stages of his career, his injury record had become increasingly difficult to ignore, and his output had declined from the extraordinary levels he produced during his best periods at the club. There was always a possibility that the Glory would eventually have to replace its marquee striker.
What has proved so jarring, however, is the apparent manner of his departure, along with what it says about the club’s preparedness for an eventuality that should hardly have been unforeseeable.
The initial report from 10 News First’s Steve Allen suggested that Taggart had been deemed “no longer required” by the club. Perth Glory subsequently pushed back strongly against that characterisation, maintaining that the decision for Taggart to leave was mutual.
While that distinction matters, so too does perception. The fact that fans were so immediately willing to believe the more damaging interpretation speaks to a broader problem that has developed throughout Ross Pelligra’s ownership: Perth Glory have repeatedly struggled to control the narrative surrounding their own decision-making.
Whether every criticism levelled at the club is fair is almost beside the point. When fans are repeatedly presented with uncertainty, contradictory messaging, poor results and decisions that appear reactive rather than strategic, the vacuum is inevitably filled with suspicion.
That is where Taggart’s departure becomes more significant than the departure of one player, because it raises a much larger question: what is the plan?
There must now be renewed scrutiny over the direction in which Ross Pelligra – or, more broadly, the Pelligra Group – is taking Perth Glory.
The club should have been planning for life after Taggart long before this week. If the intention was always for him to remain, contingency planning should nevertheless have existed. If there was a possibility that he would leave, a replacement profile should already have been identified. If the club ultimately decided that Taggart no longer represented sufficient value for his place in the squad, there should have been a coherent recruitment strategy ready to execute that decision.
That is simply what competent football operations look like.
Yet the latest reporting from The West Australian’s Ben Smith is particularly discouraging:
Glory fans should also not expect a like-for-like new signing to replace Taggart. Given his aforementioned pay-cut, the on-field value per dollar spent is unlikely to come close to matching his output and less than two months out from the season, the club will be shopping in the bargain bin for his replacement. They could use their last foreign spot on a centre-forward, but that would force them to alter their plans after spending most of the off-season coveting a speedy winger.
“Shopping in the bargain bin” is a particularly damning phrase.
Even allowing for the possibility that the expression is tongue-in-cheek, it captures something uncomfortable about where the Glory appear to find themselves, in that having lost one of their most important players, the club may now be attempting to solve a problem that should have been anticipated, with fewer resources and less time in which to solve it.
That is precisely what the old adage a stitch in time saves nine is supposed to warn against.
The problem is rarely the ninth stitch; rather, it is failing to sew the first one.
Perth Glory have had ample time to address the structural issues that have plagued the club over the past two seasons. Instead, too many problems appear to be dealt with only once they become impossible to ignore.
The timing of Taggart’s departure is therefore unfortunate, but it shouldn’t be surprising. The club knew his age. It knew his injury history. It knew his contract situation. It knew his importance to the team. It also knew that, eventually, the question of succession would have to be confronted.
That conversation should have started long before Thursday.
Indeed, the contrast between the expectations created by Pelligra’s arrival and the reality of the club today is becoming increasingly difficult to overlook. In May 2024, Pelligra was reported to have said that Perth Glory would be “unrecognisable in 12 months’ time.”
More than two years later, that statement has acquired an almost inverse meaning.
The club is approaching its 30th anniversary. A milestone that should provide an opportunity to celebrate its history, identity and place within Western Australian football. Instead, one of its greatest players, a Perth-born club icon, has departed just two months before the beginning of the new season.
Concerningly, Taggart’s departure does not exist in a vacuum.
Consider the broader picture of this off-season: repeated reports of players and staff being paid late, an underwhelming Australia Cup elimination at the hands of an NPL opponent, the early departure of a major sponsor, uncertainty surrounding the club’s recruitment strategy and the increasingly uncomfortable parallels being drawn between Perth Glory and Pelligra’s other major football investment, Catania.
None of these events, individually, proves that this ownership group is incapable of running Perth Glory.
Collectively, however, they raise a much more serious question about whether the club is being managed with the level of strategic competence, foresight and ambition required to restore it to genuine competitiveness. That distinction is important.
This is not an argument that Perth Glory should have simply thrown money at Taggart, nor that the club was obliged to retain him indefinitely. Nor is it an argument that every player departure represents an ownership failure. The issue is what happens next.
If Taggart leaves and is replaced by a carefully identified striker whose profile fits the club’s tactical and recruitment strategy, then this episode can eventually be viewed as nothing more than a difficult but necessary transition.
If, however, his departure leaves the club scrambling for an inexpensive replacement, abandoning previously established recruitment plans and entering the season with another significant hole in the squad, then the criticism becomes considerably more difficult to dismiss.
Because that would suggest the club is not controlling events. It is reacting to them, which has become the central concern surrounding Ross Pelligra’s tenure.
Fans can tolerate difficult decisions. They can tolerate losing important players. They can even tolerate periods of poor results if they can see evidence of a coherent plan and believe that the organisation understands where it is going.
What becomes exhausting is being repeatedly asked to trust a process that is increasingly difficult to see.
The erosion of confidence in Perth Glory’s ownership did not begin with Adam Taggart’s departure. It has been building for some time, through a series of seemingly disconnected incidents that have nevertheless produced the same underlying impression: that the club is too often addressing tomorrow’s problem today.
That is why Taggart matters. Not because the Glory cannot survive without him. But because his departure represents another test of whether this ownership is capable of anticipating problems rather than merely responding to them.
The next few weeks will tell us a great deal. If the Glory have a plan, this is the moment to demonstrate it. If they don’t, then “shopping in the bargain bin” will be more than an unfortunate description of their recruitment options. It will become another symbol of an ownership that has spent too long allowing manageable problems to become unmanageable ones.
A stitch in time saves nine, and Perth Glory have already left a few stitches too late.
All images courtesy of Tom McCarthy.
