It was one of the biggest days on the Melbourne Football Club’s calendar.
A match to celebrate their favourite son, Jim Stynes.
For months the Demons had been planning Jim’s Day to celebrate the life and legacy of the late AFL legend with all things Irish, a splash of green and plenty of craic on the agenda.
In the days leading up to the Round 6 fixture against Brisbane, which had been picked for Jim’s jig, Melbourne chief executive Paul Guerra was looking over the guest list for the President’s Luncheon.
But one name was missing.
Guerra found the names of Jim’s brother, Brian, and his son, Tiernan, but nowhere was his former wife, Sam Stynes.
Just weeks earlier, on St Patrick’s Day, Sam had stood under the bronze statue of her late husband at the MCG’s Avenue of Legends, front and centre at the media call to announce the special celebratory event in aid of the Jim Stynes Foundation which she founded and runs.
Guerra started asking questions and soon found out he wasn’t the only one at the club perplexed as to why one of the most important people in Stynes’s life wasn’t attending the lunch in his honour.
He then learned there was a rather large elephant in the room.
After Jim’s sad death following a public cancer melanoma battle in 2012, Sam had several years later remarried to their good friend, property developer Geoff Porz, who happened to now be on Melbourne’s board as the vice president.
The pair tied the knot in 2015, but things had gone south to the point where it was well known in the Demons inner circle that the couple was headed for a messy divorce, to the point where they could barely be in the same room.
Despite finding this out, Guerra was thinking big picture and decided it was ridiculous that Sam Stynes could be sitting in the outer eating hot chips and not with the Demons faithful.
He decided to take things into his own hands.
Guerra rang Sam and pleaded with her to have a think about attending the lunch as his personal guest.
A couple of days later she replied positively to accept his kind invitation.
This caught the board, in particular Porz, off guard, and onlookers at the lunch were stunned to see the obvious tension in the room.
Sam was seated with Guerra and his wife Amelia, alongside Stynes’ former Demons chairman Peter Spargo and his wife, Kathleen.
A few metres away Porz was on the bigwigs table next to new president, Steven Smith, and the board’s heavy hitters.
Nine days later, Paul Guerra was sacked.
Depending on who you are talking to – and there has been plenty of backroom briefing this week – there has clearly been a build-up of certain things over Guerra’s seven-month reign.
But many in the club believe the Sam Stynes lunch invitation was a key catalyst for the CEO’s shock ousting this week.
Porz was seeing red to the point of blue, “infuriated” and wanting blood.
One Melbourne insider described it to Page 13 as the “nail in the coffin”, another just shrugged saying there was no doubt this was “the moment”.
Because don’t for a second think big business can’t be that petty.
In the days after the merry Irish jigs on Jim’s Day, special board meetings were held, which ultimately led to Guerra being blindsided and moved on.
A club boss told Page 13 it “makes sense” why Guerra has moved from “puzzled” to a different stage of grief, with pending legal action against the club over his axing.
A potential conflict over differing visions for the Dees move to Caulfield racecourse has been mooted as causing tension between Guerra and the board. But many at the club say Guerra, who was also a Racing Victoria director, didn’t touch the Caulfield project: “That was Geoff Porz’s baby”.
Sometimes what’s not said is what gets ears pricked. Just like when prez Steven Smith told press on Wednesday he couldn’t possibly comment when asked about Guerra’s links to Crown VIP and accused multimillion-dollar fraudster Giang Nguyen.
There have been whispers Guerra simply wasn’t taking the club in the direction the board wanted. Others say he was spending big and elevating internal staff like his assistant to lofty sounding titles like “chief of staff of office”.
Talk of leaking to press was also spilling out. But leaking has clearly been happening from the other side, with Seven network spruiking its direct contact with president Steven Smith about the sacking.
Meanwhile, Daniel Andrews’ former advisers at FMRS crisis consultancy have had their fingers in the pie around the Caulfield project, hitting the phones in the days that followed, according to some.
It is no secret the president Smith, and his deputy Porz, are tight.
Described as a classic backroom powerbroker, a solicitor and high-flying property developer he joined the MFC board in 2023 as a director, later serving in the leadership role of vice president.
Porz has been on the scene since the early days helping his good friend Jim, when he was president of the Demons.
The club had a $5m debt with a major sponsor and Porz, the founder and former chief executive of DFO, reportedly stepped in to help.
The story goes Jim had a version straight out of the Irish rom-com PS I Love You, telling friends to “look after Sam when I’m gone.”
It was some years after his death, where the much-loved hero was given a state funeral, that Sam and Porz found love and with the blessing of Jim’s mother, the couple married in April 2015, blending their two families.
Fast forward almost a decade and club insiders say the divorce will go to court and will be “almost as heated as the Sayers split.”
Back to Jim’s Day on April 19, the second iteration of the club fundraiser was an all-round success with hopes the AFL would get behind it as an annual event. Melbourne got up with a stunning victory against the reigning premiers, with a “Jim’s jig” of Irish dancers after every Melbourne goal.
When called, Sam Stynes confirmed she and Porz were divorced and that she had a “great day” as Guerra’s guest.
“I can confirm that Geoff Porz and I are divorced. I had a great day at the Presidents Club function round for Jim’s Game, and thoroughly enjoyed Melbourne’s win,” Stynes said.
“As the founder of the Jim Stynes Foundation in honour of Jimmy’s legacy, I look forward to the JSF going from strength to strength to continue important work within our charitable communities.”
Little did Guerra know his move at the President’s luncheon meant the jig was up, and it was the beginning of his Dee-day.
As one Dees observer said this week, it could all be down to the oldest story in the book, the one of the jilted ex husband.