Eels Blogs

Between tonight’s AGM, and tomorrow’s announcement of the Eels salary cap investigation, I urge every supporter, and even the NRL, to keep one over riding objective in mind.

That objective is structural separation.

Tonight, the club will try and push through some incredibly basic constitutional changes. There is a fair chance that a large number of people will vote against those changes. If that happens, it will be a result of the factional warfare that continues to engulf our beloved club.

This doesn’t happen at other Leagues and Sporting clubs. People don’t try and de-rail reasonable attempts to update a constitution, out of spite. If happens because of the power struggle for the NRL club.

The Leagues Club can’t afford this kind of disruption. It is about to embark on a transformational development that will likely result it in eventually growing to become a $100m+ business. Structural separation will take the heat out of Leagues Club politics and allow it to grow and diversify without being

On the flipside, other NRL clubs don’t have former administrators/directors/staff leaking confidential information to newspapers. With control of the Eels up for grab every two years, it’s a breeding pool for the kind of divisive politics and factionalism that has torn our club apart for years. Lost this election? Well, don’t worry, you’ve got another two years to undermine the current regime, before you take a crack again!

Separating out the NRL club, so that it remains a Leagues Club-controlled and funded entity, but is run separately and independently, would allow a new board and all of the club's members to start again and create a brand new NRL constitution designed around stability and getting the right expertise into the organisation. It's just a no-brainer.

And key to this debate, should be the NRL. The structure at Parramatta (and other Leagues Club-funded franchises, too, I might add) is that the NRL has no ability to regulate the businesses they have been set-up to regulate. While they allow boards to oversee their franchises, where they have no real power to remove them due to complicated Leagues Club/Registered Clubs rules and regulations, then they are asking for the kind of stalemate/potential legal minefield that this saga appears to be inevitably sliding towards.

If I was Todd Greenberg, I would be making it a condition of participation that the NRL has the ability to remove directors from NRL boards, if they’re found to have contravened its laws or code of conduct. That would force clubs to instigate constitutional reform programs to accommodate the new regulations. If the NRL feel they need to put some kind of condition on a suspended penalty, this is the route I hope they go.

I worked for a long time as a tech journalist and I spent a lot of time writing about the arguments regarding structural separation of Telstra. Everyone knew needed it to happen, but for years, Telstra and the government, kept coming up with excuses as to why it wasn’t feasible. Eventually, the inevitable separation went through, and it’s been a positive for everyone, including Telstra. Change is scary, but when it’s this blindingly obvious, someone just has to step forward and get it done. I always wanted it to be our club, its' board and members driving that process, but if it needs to come from the NRL tomorrow, so be it.

I don't know what the outcome is going to be tomorrow, or how tonight is going to shake down, but I wanted to post this blog now, because regardless of what happens over the next 24 hours, this has to be something that EVERYONE who loves the Parramatta club gets behind, until it finally come to be. If we have to go through all this pain, the very least we can expect from it, is to get a sensible and sustainable structure to help the club recover and move forward.