Eels Blogs

Following events of the past 24 hours, the board must finally do the right thing for the club and call for a new election.

Quite frankly, I’ve been trying to stay as much as possible out of the politics, because I thought the club might somehow right itself (and I get accused of politicking every time I do) and I’ve always believed that the democratic process of the club should be allowed to play out.

As of the weekend, I was feeling pretty comfortable that might actually happen. Geoff Gerard is the only viable option as an interim chairman and he had appeared to step forward into that role, and I liked the messages that were coming from him in regards to things like constitution reform and the like. And with Bevan Paul stepping in to oversee the Eels club as Group CEO, I was hopeful that the club might be able to clean itself up and start moving forward again.

However, what has transpired over the last 24 hours is simply intolerable. Let’s even put aside the fact that the transcripts of recordings that reveal that current directors were clearly aware that there were issues with the club, and not one of them, decided to do the right thing and start co-operating with the NRL. Let’s put aside the fact that one of them, very clearly makes the call to shut down the club’s investigation (and seriously how on earth, does that evidence come to light and that director not get breached).

What cannot be accepted, is even at this point - even after everything that has gone through - even when many Eels fans are feeling sick to their stomach, because many of them have invested a lot of themselves in defending men and woman, based on what clearly have been lies; even then, the political shenanigans continues with Paul Garrard publicly coming out into press and taking public shots at Geoff Gerard. The same Paul Garrard that was doing his own publicity prior to the breach notice coming out, by distancing himself from past boards; decides that now the board should have a united voice.

Even when there is a clear solution in front of their faces, paranoia and self-interest kicks in, and the decision to put Bevan Paul in place as group CEO is reversed.

This club is at the point of crisis. Brad Arthur is the hottest commodity in the NRL. There are clubs that are on the verge of sacking coaches, and Arthur will be the first one they look at. I’ve been told there are a significant number of players with get-out clauses related to Arthur. He must be signed as a matter of urgency. We must also have top-shelf executives back at the club because we are bleeding sponsors, we are bleeding money and we are bleeding supporter trust.

Quite frankly, the current board are one hundred percent conflicted when it comes to responding to this case. Are we still fighting against the NRL because it’s in the best interests of the club Or are we will fighting in the interests of compromised individuals? Should hundreds of thousands of dollars of club money be spent on defending individuals who almost no one connected with the club believes should be in there positions. (And while we're at it, how on earth did we end up hiring a barrister who's has been the Catholic Church's choice of lawyer when it has come to defending accused priests).

The political players on our club still insist on fighting this like it is a factional war of attrition. At this point, how do they not understand that the battle is lost. Even if they got off on a technicality, they are no longer electable. Are they seriously going to insist on throwing away hundreds of thousands of dollars, and keeping the club in the spotlight, for a long-shot chance of redemption that will only keep them in the club for 10 months before they suffer a demoralising defeat at the next election.

Further to the point, we cannot trust this board to select our next CEO, either. This board had the opportunity to put in a top-notch CEO when Scott Seward "resigned". Now, I don’t know about you, but if I was feeling burnt and betrayed after I put in a rookie CEO with no experience running a business, the first thing I would have done was go to market and put in a top tier executive. Our board refused to appoint anyone for over six months, allowing them to run the club as basically an executive board, and then they refused to even advertise the job, instead appointing an executive that they knew might have been compromised and who, being responsible for commercial operations, had just contributed to the club recording its biggest ever football financial loss. Clearly, at this point, the primary consideration was closing ranks, because a new CEO would have almost certainly come in, discovered what was going on, and the first thing they would have done is reported everything to the NRL.

This is not club-first. This is not even incompetence. It is willful deception of the members, not just by the directors who have been named, but every director who voted for that course of action.

It must be recognised that we lost points, not just for the salary cap breaches, but for how we responded (or should I say how we refused to respond) to the evidence that the NRL had. As I’ve been saying for a long time, we needed to go to the table with the NRL long ago. We needed to get the best outcome for the club, and not for any individuals. Every director who contributed to that must accept responsibility. Every director who contributed to that must accept accountability.

How can any guardian of the club believe that the fans can expect that someone who literally broke his neck for this club in Nathan Peats, should step aside in the "best interests of the blue and gold" and "because it's just a business", yet you are unwilling to do the same. If we use the argument that this is business, then you must accept that your presence on the board is a block to new sponsors, it is a block to bringing on high-quality individuals as non-elected directors. It is a block that is only hampering the club from moving forward. Even if you believe that you have done nothing wrong, it is still in the best interests of the club, from even a business point of view, that you allow it to have some fresh air to start putting itself back together. Because I can tell you that every single business person that I have spoken to about getting involved with the club - that no-one will join any board or support the club in anyway while the Leagues Club board is still ruled by the four-person block that has controlled all of our decision making since the last election.

You must be able to see that at this point you are only putting in jeopardy the best thing that has happened to this club in decades. You are piling on the misery for a supporter-base that has already been through way too much. You owe it to the members, given you were voted in on a platform of reform and good governance, to now go back to the members and give them the opportunity to make their own judgement on who deserves to stay and who should go. All that matters is what's right for the future of the club.

Please, do the right thing.

P.S. If you ever respond to a blog on this site, then please respond to this one. If you feel the board's position is untenable please say so. If you feel the board should continue fighting its case and should try and hold their roles until the next election, please say that also. Maybe, I'm wrong and if there is still strong support for the board fighting to the death, then I will promise to shut up about anything remotely political until at least the next election. I would hope that this blog can constitute some form of sentiment analysis as to members and supporter's wishes at this point.