Over the rest of the week, ParraFirst will be announcing a number of very real, achievable strategies that we believe can be applied at a District Football club level to improve grassroots Rugby League in the area. Here's the first of those, we've just announced today. It's important to remember that unless we're successful with our bid to restructure the club and allow members to vote on NRL issues, then the upcoming election is actually only about the District competitions - it's an area where we feel we have significant experience, passion and ideas.
I'll try and keep them all to this thread so they don't clog up the site. Feedback welcomed!
http://www.parrafirst.com/news/media-release-parrafirst-launch-directors-scholarship
Media Release | ParraFirst has announced the launch of a Director’s Scholarship, which will aim to help Parramatta juniors with expenses incurred playing representative football.
Directors of the Parramatta District Rugby League club receive a $3000 honorarium, which all successful ParraFirst candidates will donate to the scholarship fund.
ParraFirst candidate Peter Serrao has been involved with Parramatta junior representative football since 1995 and won two grand finals as head coach of Parramatta Eels Harold Matthews sides in the late nineties. Serrao said that parents of elite junior footballers often faced a significant financial burden in paying for representative trips like the Australian Schoolboys tours.
“You’ll find behind almost any elite junior footballer, a very supportive family, who has often had to sacrifice a lot to enable their child to participate at representative level,” said Serrao. “We hope the Director’s Scholarship will help some of those families.”
ParraFirst candidate Lawrence Shepherd, managing director of gaming technology business Independent Gaming Australia, has been a long-time Eel sponsor for close on 25 years. Shepherd said that the Director’s Scholarship was reflective of ParraFirst’s commitment to a code of ethics that would disallow director’s benefiting commercially from their position at the club.
“We’re don’t believe directors or their businesses should be contesting business contracts given by the club or profiting financially from their positions,” Shepherd said.
“That’s a core principle of ParraFirst - the club’s interests always go before that of any individual, and that has to start at the boardroom.”
Shepherd said ParraFirst was committed to re-connecting local businesses with Rugby League throughout the Eel’s region and would aim to work with the club to put in place a district-wide program that would encourage sponsorship and support all the way down to the grassroots of the game.
“The Parramatta Eels are more than just a Rugby League team,” said Shepherd.
“They’re a focal point of the local community and we believe that a District-wide plan to engage with businesses throughout the area and bring them back into the Rugby League fold as sponsors and supporters will benefit not just the club but the local community as a whole.”
“We hope the Director’s Scholarship sets an example for that kind of engagement and can help other successful business people in the area to think about how they can contribute to Rugby League in the Parramatta district.”
Replies
Great initative from ParraFirst, this is the sort of care our club has been missing for a while now, its this sort of care that helps put the family care back in a club thats lacking it, well done ParraFirst.....
Thanks Snake. We're trying to focus on things we can do from a District Club perspective because unless we get the mandate from the fans that they want their club back, that's what the PDRLC remit is for. There hasn't been a lot going on at board-level there for the past couple of years, so its overdue for some attention.
Well done ParraFirst, a great initiative...............Geez, I hope you get the numbers on Dec 8.