Below is a summary of the key points of our discussion with Matt Gidley.
He was generous with his time and insight and we appreciate the access he provides.
If you have any questions then please let us know.
· Club sale, where are we at and expected timeline.
Whilst the club management isn’t involved in the sale progress, it’s their understanding that the process is a positive one with the likelihood that Wests could be an owner in some capacity. All parties understand the importance of finalising a potential deal as soon as practical to bring long term stability and sustainability.
From a practical standpoint, the club is in the middle of preparations and planning for 2018 so it would make a lot of sense for all parties to resolve this issue in a timely manner so that Wests could be party to the preparations for 2018.
Overall it sounds like positive discussions have taken place and are moving to some sort of resolution of the ownership piece.
· Board was brought in to improve the commercial acumen and help reconnect to business community, has this happened.
Much has been done in this area and Matt feels that the business connections have be re-established. Certainly it sounds like the club has the ear of prominent people within the region and they’ve been used recently to sell the benefits of the club and region to prospective players. The Club, when benchmarked against all the other NRL Clubs in the key commercial measures, performs very strongly.
· TPA’s what is happening with these?
The key thing is that TPA’s should be registered with the NRL and all ours are, we aren’t willing to undertake any impropriety with respect to TPA’s. They should be a payment for some sort of work or usage of a player’s personal brand, not just a cash top up.
Matt wouldn’t be drawn on this but making some assumptions, it might be reasonable to suspect that some clubs use TPA’s as a slush fund to pay players outside of the cap. Yes I know, impossible to believe.
Matt has been proactive with the NRL to try and highlight the TPA / market value argument, he’s fighting the fight; it remains to be seen whether the NRL acts on it.
· Junior development – Poor record, what’s changing? Is the junior pipeline working?
Matt indicated that we were pouring records amounts of money into our juniors and this was the thing that he was most proud of. He also outlined the success our juniors were having such as the Harold Matthews team.
Matt said that the primary focus now is to develop the kids and always keep the good ones. We discussed the ones who’d slipped through the net like Cordner, Jackson and Mitchell. He acknowledged that mistakes had been made but in the case of someone like Cordner, there were issues around injuries and the Roosters threw the lot at him. He doesn’t believe we’ll lose too many of the kids we want to keep in the future.
We discussed the days of the golden crop of juniors and how we’d done a poor job over the last decade or so. He feels that we’ve got a better structure in place now and a greater number of full time employees solely focussed on development and management of the junior groups.
The centre of excellence will also play a major role in developing and increasing the catchment of the junior teams.
· Centre of Excellence.
Of all the things that Matt spoke about, this was the most interesting and exciting. Seems we’ve prepared a detailed submission for government funding to build the centre of excellence. The preferred site is near the stadium.
The facility will include, gym, meeting facilities, an aquatic centre, medical centre, medical imaging centre, mental health and wellness centre, retail space and indoor / outdoor training facilities.
It will be a one stop shop for the players and coaching staff.
The Knights will be based there with administrative offices.
It will also be the training academy for rugby league for all of Northern NSW which will help us capture more potential recruits as all the good young players will pass through the academy on a regular basis.
Beyond that it will be a community asset as its facilities will be open to the sporting associations of the region and general public when not be used by the club.
As an indication, the Panthers COE is the Rolls Royce of COE’s and it cost $22M, the Titan’s COE cost $12M.
The club is hoping to get some feedback in June as to the securing of government support.
Matt didn’t say this but it was reported in the media over the weekend that Wests contribution to the COE was part of its undertaking to the NRL to secure the franchise.
· What can the fans do to help – sponsors, NRL others?
Matt said just keep supporting the club in any way you can. Support sponsors and keep supporting the team.
· Update on player recruitment.
Matt confirmed that we’d thrown the kitchen sink at Bird and we were disappointed to miss out on him. They’d made a significant offer but had no intention to revise it. He indicated that they were quite confident that they would secure him but as soon as the Broncos came in, they felt they’d miss it. It seems that Jack didn’t want to be first to jump and that they felt that he’d wanted to see who else had signed before he signed.
That made the injury to Scott all the more costly as the club felt we were a very big chance to sign Matt Scott and he would have been of great benefit to the young players on and off the field and in hindsight, he may have made the difference in clinching the deal with Bird.
Understandably the club was then hesitant about signing Scott and as it turned out, he re-signed with the Cowboys pretty quickly.
In a broader context the club feels that there will be a large number of players coming onto the market including a number who are under current contract. He feels that clubs like the Dogs and Roosters will need to shed players to fit their new ones in and he feels that depending on the cap situation, clubs made need to let go of players they really don’t want to.
It’s the worst kept secret but we are chasing props and a playmaker.
Matt confirmed we were talking to Foran but in my opinion it didn’t seem likely, again my opinion, not from Matt.
The million dollar question is who to chase if we miss out on Foran, which seems likely. Matt didn’t provide any insight into that.
We asked about Matulino and Matt said that whilst they’d spoke to him, he felt he’d link up with the Tigers.
We are currently working to a cap of $8.7M for 2018.
Interestingly, he also said that he’d been using the likes of Joey, Matty, Bedsy and the Chief to sell the club and region to perspective recruits. They are adamant they want players with the right attitude and who want to be at the cub, they won’t take anyone for the sake of it.
· Hokko’s future.
We discussed Trent’s situation and Matt confirmed it was performance based not injury. Subsequent to that, this was confirmed in the media over the weekend.
We asked the question as to the future of Trent with a season to run on his deal and a knee which will only get worse and Matt understandably didn’t offer any comment.
· Brown’s future, 2018 was supposed to be his breakout year.
Matt indicated that the management and board are happy with the job that Brown is doing but of course they would have liked to see a few more wins. Matt felt that injuries to Buhrer, Rory and Mullen’s dramas have really hurt the team’s ability to win games.
But he also said that at some point we need to find a way to win. He also said that tactically, Brown is a very good coach and he has the support of the players in what he is trying to achieve. He also stated the importance of stability through a project such as this and hoped this could be achieved.
· Mullen’s future, why does it take so long?
Matt indicated that the Club hoped the issue would be resolved in the next 2-3 weeks as the matter was being finalised with the NRL.
He also reiterated how disappointing it was to see Jarrod end his career like this but there was zero tolerance within the club and the league in general.
· Central Coast
We touched on this and Matt felt we were getting the best of the players from that region as Newcastle was closer than Sydney. Shane brought up Connor Watson as the one who got away. It doesn’t seem like the club has a plan to push further into that area, but they should.
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