About a month or so ago, Tony Maroun who runs the 3P campaign, told Steve Sharp that he already had the numbers and that Steve should abandon the ParraFirst campaign, run as an independent and then 3P would "look favourably" upon him coming into the Leagues Club election.
Numbers? How could he have the numbers? With 3800 disparate voting members, surely nobody could "have the numbers". I was wrong. He had the numbers.
By about mid-afternoon, I'd pretty much accepted we weren't going to win. Pretty close to every second voting member would walk straight through and immediately head over to warmly greet one of the 3P candidates. I'd estimate there is a pretty strong block of around 300 "friends and family" voters behind 3P. That was actually pretty close to our pre-election estimates. I'd hope we could get close to 1000 voters to show up and I believe if we had of done that, we'd have won. I believe we were getting at least two out of every three voters who didn't have a personal connection to any candidate.
If you take out that family and friends block, then the fact we managed to get less than 500 out of 3500 members motivated enough to vote, was a bit of a personal fail on my behalf as a professional communicator and as the person who had the job of getting our message out there. It's something I'll have a chance to reflect upon in the future, but my immediate feeling is that I was somewhat naive to think that the membership base would respond to an open, intelligent and professional campaign. I honestly thought that after the last two years of what has been indisputable mismanagement, that the membership base would thirst for something greater than ex-players who's legacy far exceeded their ability to contribute to the club going forward.
I still carry great sadness about the result. I honestly believed this was perhaps a one-time opportunity to get the right set of skills and expertise onto the board. I believed this was perhaps a one-time opportunity to get our club structure right. At the AGM yesterday, I asked the chairman again if he would please at least commit to conducting a review of the club structure and constitution. He said he would not. Tony asked if the club would at least look at reciprocal voting rights. The chairman said that was being looked at, but I was told the same thing last year.
Over the past two days, I've tackled the club restructure issue with current board members and those supporting the board. I keep getting told, it's all too hard right now and that when the football club is financially better off that it will be looked at again. Let's be very clear. That's simply an excuse to continue a structure that makes it almost impossible to remove a current board. Unfortunately, the Bulldogs are the benchmark for professionalism in our code right now. They have all of their Rugby League operations operating under the Rugby League Club and further more they require a majority of Football directors to sit on the Leagues Club board as well. Under that structure they were able to ensure last year that the Leagues Club tipped in $5 million to their Rugby League operations last year and they were able to turn around their football success in a single season. Quite clearly then if the Bulldogs are able to operate under that kind of model, it's possible for us as well.
I will not give up this fight. I believe it is an NRL issue and I will now be taking it to that level now because I don't believe the current board will ever put the club's interests ahead of its own re-election chances. In the same way that the NRL has mandated that clubs now must have stand-alone CEOs, I believe they should also mandate that Rugby League clubs exist as independent entities. The NRL will from next year be contributing more than double the money that the Leagues club does into Parramatta. It needs to protect that investment.
Finally, this club has to move past the Fitzgerald years. If every dissenting voice and person who stands up for change, cannot do so without getting tarred with the Fitzy brush then we will never get the opportunity to be as great as we can be. Yesterday, I got up at the AGM and in addition to my question about the restructure I asked why there was no proxy voting and can that be addressed at future elections. (I'll write another post on the issue).
Mario Libertini, who as you would know is a Leagues Club director got up and said why wasn't the issue of proxy voting addressed four years ago, and asked who created the current constitution. How the hell is that relevant? I wasn't around the politics of the club at that stage and I have no interest in who's at fault for the current crap we have to deal with. All I know is right now the current board has had four years to make the kinds of changes they campaigned on in 2008 and they haven't done it and based on the chairman's response to my question they have no intention of doing it. The current board are the one's who current policies are to continue to operate under a structure that Fitzgerald put in place from a different era and who continue to deny members cries for at the very least a review of the structure. What harm can do it do to conduct an open review? Why not appoint an independent committee (for which I will happily put my hand up) that can report back to members about the options the club has to create a new operation model for the new era of Rugby League.
At the very least, I hope ParraFirst made more members aware of these issue. I know a lot of them aren't really interested in what happens at board-level or AGMs, but to be successful you have to get your core right.
I'd like to thank everybody who helped with our campaign whether it was handing out how-to-vote cards, spreading the word or just participating in intelligent debate. Thank you to my fellow candidates including Matt Hollier, who is just an awesome human being and smart as hell. Bongo was also a great support throughout the entire process and who's passion for the club continues to be an inspiration for me. I got home from the AGM around midday yesterday and slept till about 4am this morning. I'm glad it's over, and although we couldn't get there for you all, I do believe that a lot of positives will come from the election and the communication we've had with members.
And even though she won't read this, my wife is simply an amazing, incredible woman who let me sacrifice an inordinate amount of time, money and effort and took up all the slack that was left behind in terms of the running of our household and business.
Replies
Phil, congratulations to you and the rest of the boys for having a dig endeavouring to make the place a better run business. It is great news to us all that you will not give up the good fight.
Every avalanche starts with a single snowflake.
Big Z, I didn't say there was anything wrong with the family and friends vote. I know a lot of the directors and particularly Roy spends an incredible amount of time around the Leagues Club and subsequently much of that voting block is earned. I absolutely don't dispute anyone's right to vote or say that any vote is worth more than any other vote and I apologise if you read it that way. That's simply part of my analysis of the election process I think that's where the numbers lie. So for the benefit of anyone deciding to campaign in the future I don't think anybody can succeed unless you were able to motivate at least 1000 people to vote. That's around a 25 per cent voting turnout, which I think for a voluntary election with no proxy voting is going to be a pretty big stretch.
For me the election was never about "being on the board" it was about getting a number of really fundamental changes in place. It would have been an honour to be able to represent our membership but I consider the fact that I get to run this place, as much of an honour anyway.
In the end, we work with the democratic process we have - I'd like it to be more democratic - but in the end that process resulted in the seven directors that we have on the board today. I do congratulate all of those directors and hope that they can do good things by the club. I'm glad Steve Sharp got back on - he's a really good man, who you can take on his word and he has an amazing passion for our club.
*EDIT - PP please don't make personal insults* I refuse to renew my membership after I withdrew in 2010 when 3P was in charge and I urge all members to withdraw there membership, let 3P and its 300 idiot's who voted for them on saturday run the club with limited finance's. I honestly believe the death of the NRL eels is approaching with these clowns 3P in charge.
If we withdraw our memberships then we can't vote these monkeys out.
That's exactly the wrong thing to do - you need to be a member to have a say. Every time a dissenting voice doesn't renew - it's a win for the people you want to remove.
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