After enjoying a week away from everything, following what I think might just have been the busiest week of my life, I'm back and feeling mightily re-energised.
Obviously, there were follow-on shocks from the election. I'm disappointed with what transpired. I don't believe what happened were in keeping with member's wishes and as you all know that is what I'm most passionate about and what I will continue to fight for.
I'm only more vehement now that our constitution is a joke. Our club structure remains broken. It's a systemic failing that will always mean that the club sits upon an unstable foundation. I've had so many people say to me over the years, whenever I get on my hobby horses, 'what does it really matters?'. You don't fix problems by working on the surface issues. Yes, you can putty over the dents and slap on a new coat of paint but ultimately if you don't fix the root cause of the problem, those problems will re-arise and generally prove harder to fix the longer you leave it. It is my longer term goal to fix that.
So I urge you, not to consider the fight to be over. I urge you to become members of BOTH clubs.
Indeed, if you are not a member of the Leagues Club, the club is running a very generous membership offer right now that runs till the end of the month whereby you get a $25 sanity gift card or DVD.
http://www.parraleagues.com.au/default.aspx?id=351
If you can afford it, consider taking up the perpetual membership. You never have to worry about your membership again (assuming you don't have it taken off you!), you get a free game pass to 3 selected home games in 2013 plus various other club vouchers. And you can forever have you say on the entity which for the moment runs our football team.
And doubly so, do take out a Football Club membership as well.
What we all want to be aiming for, is to see the members decide who runs their club. Not the ridiculous politics, and faction wars, and lobbying that I've seen first hand which right now are so important in these elections. We should all continue to demand that and we should give ourselves the ability to have that say.
For me, I'm going to take the opportunity now that all that politicking is over to focus my love of the Eels back on the site. I've taken on board a lot of the feedback that I've been getting both via the threads and via PMs and a lot of the things that I've wanted to do, I'll be talking more about over the next week - but the over-arching goal will be to re-focus the site on football and the Eels.
Anyway, in summary, it's nice to be feeling optimistic about the future of our club again. Optimism, though, should never give way to complacency.
Go you mighty Eels.
Replies
Thanks Phil....welcome back to civilisation mate after your sojourn to the Pacific. Did you spot any Fijian or Tongan rugby players that might be interested in playing for the Eels - like Joey and Freddy did with Etu Nabuli who they sent to Gus at Penrith?
The constitution is a joke. How Roy was able to still join the board of the LC due to a loophole in OUR laws is really devastating. We were rejoicing on Saturday and Sunday that we had got rid of the bloke that banned Phil and was attacking OUR website - not to mention he is PERSONALLY responsible for the decline in the performance of our footy team - because the buck stops with him!
The fight is not over. 1 Eyed Eel members need to unite. As we have seen in the recent election results UNITY is everything!
Agitators continue to infiltrate OUR site and tell us that ParraFirst are in fact something else. Tosh! I agree with everything ParraFirst are trying to achieve for the normal Eel fan - a return to transparency in everything they do and returning the footy team to us - THE MEMBERS.
I have every confidence that new chairman Steve Sharp and his team will lead us out of the mire of the cold war and into a better place.
I'm looking forward to positive change..... Eel for Life!
John, your entitled to your opinion but its all the same FUD I've heard time and time again and what we have all heard time and time again.
If you can explain to me why would a guy who is Dragons supporter would put himself through three elections, turn up to AGMs, go to games, club events, etc. How exactly will it benefit Tom's business? And if you can explain Fitzgerald's role in ParraFirst going to the FC election with the policy of changing his constitution, etc.
Spags and co. had four years to prove themselves. I think you owe it the club you support to give the new board an opportunity to prove themselves without the rumour mongering and FUD.
And dude, seriously, I'm so over the what wonderful faciltiies we have argument Have you seen a club in Sydney that hasn't upgraded its facilities in the last five years. That's what clubs do. If we want to compare facilities, let's take one little tiny much ballyhooed example of progress and compare the children's play area Parra put in and which was highlighted in the annual report, with the children's play area that Wenty Leagues has built. And then let's talk about why my kids beg me to take them to Wenty at every opportunity. And then lets talk about the comparative growth in revenue between Wenty and Parramatta over the last couple of years. And then let's talk about how the Bulldogs managed to poach the manager at Wenty that did all that, while we had non-club people running our Leagues Club and achieving negative real growth despite spending a shitload on renovations. I don't want to go over all this ground again, because the election's been done and dusted so how about you sit back and hope that the new blokes in charge of our club make good decisions, just like we all hoped 3P would do four years ago, so our club can be successful again.
Next!
People need to let go of this crap and start acting like a united club. I just saw a pic on FB - a mocked up poster of Tom Issa the 'Dragons fan'. Jamesy would cringe at the amateur graphic design skills behind this particular piece of mud. FFS!! If that's the worst smear campaign that someone can come up with then John Barker your mob are just not trying hard enough.
How about if you're going to throw allegations about such as this - which are just eye-rollingliy stupid and infantile - you provide a shred of evidence? It's not good enough to say 'he said it publicly' - that's just repeating a lie that was concocted by the desperado's in the 3P camp because they have NOTHING to clutch at but straws.
Parrafirst candidates had no history of failed companies and unpaid taxes, no history of carrying out Kangaroo Court trials of members, and no history of buying a revolving door of coaches, CEO's and management, nor do they have a history of giving lucrative Board seats and management jobs to their mates.
Tom Issa is a decent, hard working family man who has created a successful business in Parramatta - and all you can come up with is repeating the dodgy claim that he's a Dragons supporter? On that basis alone Parrafirst deserve to be overseeing the Leagues Club Board, because 3P have shown they have NOTHING!!!
I didn't enjoy the wooden spoon last year . Who brought that to the club?
Its common knowledge we are behind just about every club in the comp when it comes to training facilities, but we have a set of escalators in the club lol
Sterlo Supported Manly
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