MELBOURNE'S football team will be compromised in its ability to compete until the club is beyond simply trying to survive financially, new chief executive Cameron Schwab said yesterday.

"Producing great players and great football teams … will be compromised in the shorter term, I think, because it has to be. Because securing the club requires that, but we can't be looking back in five years' time and still be compromising that aspect of the organisation," Schwab said.

"It is absolutely about survival, no question. The first stage, it is survival, it is about securing its next salary payment, securing its next rental payment, but then, over time, it's about building a club which can sustain itself without having to go and convince the AFL of the need to support it the way it does.

"It needs to be able to make its own way in the world and in doing so then provide what it needs to provide for coaches and players to get the best out of themselves."

Schwab was yesterday announced in the job he had only weeks ago declared he did not want. He put his change of heart down to the emotional pull of the club and the realisation that the organisation that gave him his break in football at 18 and launched him into football administration was in peril.

The appointment ahead of Hawthorn's highly regarded Terry Dillon, and after Geelong's Stuart Fox withdrew from the process, reunites the Demons of the 1980s in positions of authority to rescue the club.

Schwab arrived at Melbourne in 1982 as office boy before moving to recruiting. It was at the time that current power brokers Jim Stynes (president), Chris Connolly (football director) and Garry Lyon all launched their careers there.

Stynes was at pains yesterday to say that while personal relationships were important to the role, the extent of his friendship with Schwab was overstated. What was more important was Schwab's relationship with the AFL.

"He has a great relationship with the AFL, which helps, and Cameron has a great relationship with the MCC as well. I really believe the AFL are starting to respect the things we are trying to do now and the steps we are taking," Stynes said.

He cited Schwab's CV — having taken over Richmond as general manager during the Save Our Skins campaign, having been chief executive of Melbourne after the club had voted to merge, and assuming the role at Fremantle when the club was $8 million in debt with 12,000 members to now having five consecutive million-dollar profits — as proof he was the corporate surgeon the club needed.

Schwab, who has an initial three-year contract, will begin in early October.

Meanwhile, Schwab's predecessor at Melbourne, Paul McNamee, has been appointed interim CEO of the Southern Cross FC consortium, which is bidding for the second Melbourne franchise in the A-League.

The group, which plans to base the club at the newly refurbished State Athletics Centre at Albert Park if it is successful, but play matches alongside Melbourne Victory at the new stadium at Olympic Park, has also engaged SBS broadcaster and soccer identity Les Murray as "football ambassador".

With MICHAEL LYNCH