aken on board advice from various quarters and he has been provided with free advice from the media at large. Let’s start with Roger Corbett. Corbett did a splendid job at Woolworths in years gone by. But that was then and this is now. Times have changed. It is a different ball game now, and trying to go back to the good old days is just not going to work. And even though Cairns asked Corbett to do the job, why on earth did he accept? He must have known it wouldn’t work and that he would be stepping on Banducci’s toes. Was it a bit of déjà vu? Or was it a bit of ego? Or both? Moving on to Banducci, he has a huge task ahead of him. It’s hard to say when this all started, but Ralph Waters, the previous chairman, ran for the hills in August last year after Grant O’Brien resigned in June – not that there was necessarily a link. But Waters, and later Cairns, did not cover themselves in glory in the way they handled the process to find a replacement for O’Brien. Meanwhile, not a day goes by without Woolworths making the news. A lot is self-inflicted, either right now or having been predicated by Banducci’s predecessors. But one can feel some empathy towards Banducci. He has this monumental task ahead of him and he needs to get on with it unencumbered by has-been CEOs. Stuart Bennie is a retail consultant at Impact Retailing and can be contacted at stuart@impactretailing.com.au or 0414 631 702. Access exclusive analysis, locked news and reports with Inside Retail Weekly. Subscribe today and get our premium print publication delivered to your door every week.