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Parramatta Leagues Club board sacked, administrator appointed

El Diablo

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https://www.theaustralian.com.au/sp...w/news-story/96b809a26a8ffda374a2dc2e9b1011aa

Parramatta Eels turn to Shane McCurry for football review

One of the men who helped rebuild Essendon following the departure of coach James Hird has been charged with finding answers to the woes at Parramatta.

Leadership expert and consultant Shane McCurry has been called on to assist with the review of the Eels’ football department following a season of abject disappointment for the club.

McCurry, who has also been intimately involved at Wests Tigers in a consultancy capacity, will be assisted by former Australian fullback Greg Brentnall and ex-Sydney Swans player Rob Kerr.

Parramatta chief executive Bernie Gurr announced the trio would conduct a sweeping review of the Eels’ football department in a letter to the club’s members yesterday.

Gurr said he expected the review to take eight weeks as the trio looks at every aspect of the operations, including governance and leadership, recruitment and retention, player roster and salary cap, and the junior leagues.

The Eels started the year among the favourites for the premiership but have languished near the foot of the ladder all season, having won only three games.

“Our aspiration for our Parramatta Eels is to have a high-performing football department that is consistently achieving great outcomes for everyone involved in our club — our fans, players, staff, sponsors and all other stakeholders connected with the club,” Gurr wrote.

“We are determined to ensure that the football department has the best possible people, systems and resources to give the Eels the best opportunity to succeed on the field.

“On-field success is a key driver of our overall club success.

“Consistent with last week’s announcement, we planned to engage an experienced and independent third party to be involved with the project.

“After a thorough search and consultation process, PNRL has engaged experienced consultant Shane McCurry to assist with the project.

“Shane has assisted us to develop a comprehensive approach for conducting the project, which will include speaking to staff and players internally and benchmarking our football department against other teams, sports and industries internationally.”

As well as Essendon and Wests Tigers, McCurry has also worked with North Melbourne and Richmond in the AFL. His Linkedin account describes him as a “thought leader in dynamic settings across industries including high performance sport”. His foundation philosophy is that “all individuals, teams and organisations have the capacity to improve and can reach their full potential through focusing on progress, story, connection, wellbeing and reflection”.

“It is anticipated that this project will take approximately eight weeks with recommendations to be considered by the board and football department,” Gurr wrote.

“Once the project is completed we will provide an update to our valued members, fans and stakeholders.

“At our core, we are a football club and we are totally committed to supporting our rugby league programs with the very best resources and practices, and this project is another step in ensuring the club is successful now and into the future.”

Parramatta have already begun the process of regeneration, having signed Canberra prop Junior Paulo and Sydney Roosters winger Blake Ferguson for next season. The expectation is that the shopping spree will continue, with a number of players also exiting the club.

Five-eighth Corey Norman is unlikely to be at Parramatta in 2019, while the club is yet to make a decision on whether to resign Jarryd Hayne, who is off-contract at the end of the year.

Centre Michael Jennings is also under a cloud given he trained with the NSW Cup side last week and has one year remaining on a lucrative deal.

While the playing ranks are in a state of flux, coach Brad Arthur has been assured that he will continue in the role next season — he has one year remaining on his deal and was a uniting force for the club when they went through the devastation of the 2016 salary cap scandal.
 

El Diablo

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https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/s...d/news-story/908428e6c90c208c3cee252c31a7eb76

Parramatta Eels turn to the man who helped rebuild Wests Tigers to turn the club around

DAVID RICCIO CHIEF SPORTS WRITER, The Sunday Telegraph
25 minutes ago


PARRAMATTA officials turned to Western Sydney rivals the Wests Tigers before appointing the leadership expert in charge of rebuilding the rubble that is the Eels.

Shane McCurry, a culture and leadership consultant, has begun an all-encompassing review of the Eels football department in the wake of a wasted season that promised so much.

The significance of the board-led review can’t be understated given the last-placed Parramatta face the prospect of playing in a “Spoon Bowl’’ against 15th-placed Canterbury on Thursday night.

McCurry is no stranger to culture and club reviews, having helped rebuild Essendon following the departure of James Hird in 2015.

McCurry, who has also worked with the NRL itself, was employed by the Wests Tigers during their own quagmire of player contract dispute, coaching, culture and leadership turmoil two years ago.

His role with the Tigers in February 2016 was to specifically review the club’s culture and identify issues with team building practices.

And while the Eels review is of a vastly wider scale and scope, Wests Tigers chief executive Justin Pascoe — whose club is now enjoying the fruits of their internal overhaul — said he backed McCurry when approached by Parramatta.
 

El Diablo

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https://www.theaustralian.com.au/sp...d/news-story/84c8255223e2fd8ddf9c02e88b931cb0

NRL: Player agents escape Eels scandal largely unscathed

The Parramatta salary cap scandal cost the Eels millions in legal fees, fines and lost sponsorship. It also claimed a slew of high-profile scalps. Remarkably, after an investigation stemming more than two years, player agents are set to walk away largely unscathed.

The Australian understands only one agent has been issued with a please explain over the cap scandal, the embarrassing outcome serving to highlight why the NRL and players union are fighting so hard to bring in new rules governing the regulation of player managers.

The agent accreditation committee — the organisation currently charged with monitoring player managers — is understood to have met on Tuesday night and decided to issue a single breach notice, a decision that appears highly disproportionate to the price paid by the Eels.

The club was fined $1 million, docked 12 premiership points and stripped of their 2016 Auckland Nines title.

The rorts related to third-party payments over a five-year period and led to the deregistration of a host of officials from the game. The majority of the Eels board was also removed, with several other directors standing down.

Parramatta supporters and sponsors were forced to endure a period of pain as their side was given little hope of playing finals football.

Remarkably, the player agents have largely been absolved of any blame.

As many as 11 were implicated in the scandal — references to player managers are littered through hundreds of pages of witness testimony. And the scars inflicted by the scandal are only just healing at Parramatta.

The club and officials paid a hefty price — both financially and emotionally — after the NRL integrity unit waded through reams of documents, and conducted interviews with players and officials at the Eels.

The sense was that the agents would also be targets. Yet the accreditation committee decided it only had enough evidence to confidently act against one player manager and was reluctant to take a risk on any more given they would have left themselves open to legal action.

The committee was already forced to seek indemnities from the ARL Commission to pursue the agents amid fears that a legal fight would cripple the organisation.

Those fears have been diminished greatly given only one agent is under the gun. It is understood a breach notice has been issued against the agent involved, giving him five days to respond to the allegations.

The decision to only pursue one agent is likely to prompt a backlash across the game and intensify the push to give the NRL or Rugby League Players Association greater powers to investigate agents when there is evidence of cap violations.

While the NRL was able to pool all the evidence of cap rorting in order to take action against the club, the accreditation committee had separate strains of evidence against individual agents, much of which relied on testimony from officials who were arguably unreliable.

The inability to sanction the agents en masse has cast a glaring spotlight on a system that was already undergoing review.

Few people within the game have faith in the current structure, and that view is likely to be fuelled by the outcome of the Eels investigation.

The NRL and RLPA have been in talks with the player managers about setting up a new scheme that would allow the game to more closely monitor and regulate their work.

The system, which the NRL and RLPA hope to have in place by November 1, would raise the age at which players can be signed and limit how long they can be tied down.

It would also give the game more financial clout to pursue agents who breach the rules and potentially mean the powers of the integrity unit could be enlisted to help investigate any allegations.

The agents are railing against the plan, having enlisted a lawyer to present their side of the argument as they seek to protect their turf.

The investigation into the player agents at the centre of the Parramatta scandal shapes as the final straw for those championing change.

While there will no doubt be anger at the decision to exonerate the vast majority of player agents, there will be some form of relief at Parramatta as the curtain is finally brought down on a tawdry period for the game and the club, which was decimated by the salary cap scandal.

The scandal also prompted a review of the third-party system. That review is ongoing, although it is understood little headway has been made.
 

El Diablo

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NRL: Broncos we need to cut back on TPAs
Broncos: nah
NRL: as you were
more like

Turdles: TPA's are getitng out of hand and it's not a level playing field
Broncos: We don't have TPA's
Turdles: I know. I was talking about the other clubs that do
 

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