Let them eat Crow: Parramatta's past greats embarrassed and disappointed over AGM
GLENN JACKSON
10 May, 2012 03:00 AM
THE decision by Parramatta officials to allow under-fire players to face disgruntled supporters at the club's AGM this week has been slammed by some of the Eels' most famous names.
Steve Sharp, a former premiership winner who was at Parramatta Leagues Club when the entire squad stood on stage at Tuesday night's meeting, said he was embarrassed to be a former player of the club, while the players' involvement earned the ire of one of the most mild-mannered of Eels greats, Michael Cronin. ''They [the board] are the people that were elected to run the football club, they are the ones who should front the people on that night,'' Cronin said. ''The footballers and the coach front up every Saturday and Sunday; an AGM is a time for the people that run the club, the board. I just don't think the players should have to go through it. Does it belittle them? I don't know. But did any of them look comfortable going there?''
Sharp, who played in four straight grand finals in the early 1980s for the club, said: ''It was very disappointing. From my perspective, I was down the front and I could see the tension on some of the players' faces. I was embarrassed to be an ex-Parramatta player.''
Another Eels premiership winner, Peter Wynn, said he was surprised that the players were put in the position of facing Eels supporters so publicly, after a one-from-nine start to the season. ''I've never seen anything like that before,'' Wynn said.
He is likely to see it again though. Eels chief executive Bob Bentley, in defending the decision to make the players and under-siege coach Stephen Kearney front the meeting, said the club was happy with how the night played out and were planning to do the same again.
''The board felt that the AGM was an opportunity for the players to come along,'' Bentley said. ''From my understanding, it's not the first time that sort of thing has happened … But the way they presented themselves last night was something we'll continue to do in the future.
''Regardless of whether we're last or first, we'll probably continue to do it at each AGM.''
Bentley rejected any assertion that the decision to let the players take the stage was an attempt by the board to take the focus off them.
''There's no intention to take the focus off the board,'' he said. ''The whole focus of putting the players there was to be transparent to our fans and give them an opportunity.
''At some point we would have had to do that … if the performances of the team kept going in the direction it was going, we would have had to have some circuit-breaker to do that, so we felt that the AGM was an appropriate time to do that, because we knew that there would be an opportunity for fans to turn up and take that opportunity to put them in front of them.''
Bentley said he had addressed the players earlier in the day, and maintained there was no animosity from them about being made to stand on stage.
''I addressed them in the morning, just in terms of running through what the process was for the evening,'' he said. ''None of them indicated, 'Why do we have to front up?'
''That wasn't front of mind for them … We've all got to work hard.''
