Eels Blogs

Today, we officially launch the ParraFirst ticket, of which we are putting forward six candidates seeking election to the Parramatta District Rugby League Club board. We have a web presence at www.parrafirst.com and various social media presences at Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

In brief:
- Our core election premise will be to bring professionalism and relevant skills to the Parramatta Eels boardroom
- Our central strategic initiative will be to undertake a review of the structure of the Eels so as to allow members the opportunity to control their Rugby League team
- Our initial action point will be to ensure that the Parramatta District Rugby League Club has a strategic plan in place, which is communicated to all PDRLC members with clear KPIs and metrics to ensure accountability going forward

I’ll write another post focusing on the second issue. In this blog, I’d simply like to introduce you to the ParraFirst candidates.

Current PDRLC board member Steve Sharp heads up the ticket. Steve is somewhat unique in that I’d describe him as your “triple threat”. He’s a former professional footballer, who has long been involved with the junior district leagues as his son Dylan was a rep player for Cabramatta and he also boasts solid professional credentials as a manager at the Department of Fair Trading who is currently completing an MBA. I’m yet to meet any former Eel footballer who has put in so much of himself to try and further our club’s interests. ParraFirst has involved a whole bunch of people but Steve has personally selected every member of this ticket based on his desire to recraft the board with directors who have relevant and significant professional experience.

You of course know both myself (Phil Sim) and Matt Hollier (Muttman). I bring my experience working in digital and social media, as well as my understanding of supporter issues that I’ve developed in almost a decade of running this site. I have very strong views on the club positioning itself as a leader in the digital engagement space, both as a means to improving supporter satisfaction and as a large emerging revenue stream.

Matt’s corporate experience mean he has a very deep understanding of how boards should operate, having both reported to, and sat on boards in the past. Matt’s place on the ticket is based by the group’s desire to ensure that a Parramatta board must have take very seriously issues of corporate governance, risk management, stakeholder transparancy and accountability and ethics policies.

Peter Serrao is the commercial manager of the Sydney Olympic Park Authority so he gives us somebody who knows venues. However more importantly, Peter is a two-time Harold Matthews premiership winning coach who was a part of Brian Smith’s successful coaching team in the late nineties. He is a life member and currently works as part of our junior system as head coach of the summer school program. He has played and coached in the Parramatta district since 1975.

Tom Issa brings to our ticket experience in events, hospitality and government liaison. He runs a motoring event company so understands events logistics and sponsor management. He also runs a couple of hospitality businesses including the Port Bar on Parramatta River. Lawrence Shepherd is the managing director of Independent Gaming Australia, a Baulkham-Hills based gaming technology business, which specialises in making club businesses more successful via technology-based loyalty systems and programs. Lawrence was also a sponsor of the club for 25 years.

Among the six of us, we have experience across all of the major revenue streams related to the club - gaming, hospitality, sponsorship & advertising, membership/subscriptions and event co-ordination. We have experience in corporate boardroom environments, media management, supporter relations, venues and government liaison. And we have significant Rugby League experience - a former professional footballer who has won three premierships as a player, and a highly successful junior coach who boasts two premierships. Tom Issa was a former Parramatta junior representative player, Matt has managed a junior development squad and I’d like to hope that I’ve proven I have some insight into the game in my writing for this website. We have extensive business experience. Four of us have founded and managed successful businesses and our other two candidates have senior management experience.

As I mentioned our goal is to put the Parramatta Eels Rugby League operation back into the hands of its members. We hope that members vote as they would if they were appointing members to their own businesses. We feel our candidates bring significantly more relevant experience to the board than current sitting members.

We are united in our belief that a board doesn’t run the business, rather that it is there to support and oversee the operational management. We’re fully supportive of the club’s CEO and coach and we have no intention of coming in and ransacking the current operation. We won’t be interfering, putting ourselves into the media spotlight or awarding ourselves business contracts. However, having relevant experience means that if performance indicators show that things aren’t running as they should, we’ll be in a far better position to work with the club’s team to address any problems and get things back on track before they run off the rails as they have in the past. We will ensure that performance is measured and that it is reported back to the club’s stakeholders - which, if we get our way, will be Parramatta Eels members and season ticket holders.

I’m doing this, as is everyone on this ticket, because we believe we have an opportunity to fundamentally address ongoing problems that, if not addressed, will never allow this club to be all that it can be. We welcome your feedback and if you’re able to vote, we obviously welcome your support on Parramatta Eels election day. If you can’t vote and you believe in what ParraFirst stands for, please help spread the word.

You can find out more about each individual candidate at: http://www.parrafirst.com/meet-our-candidates/.