I think you will find that will become quite self evident shortly.
I have held off from this conversation for a long time, basically knowing that I will be once again shown as some sort of apologist, some sort of spokesman, as soon as I scribe a word, and anything I will say will be silenced by some short sharp, 10 word answer saying something to do with either the 9 million dollar loss or the lack of a premiership.
Most fans reacted poorly to Denis's statements that he could not guarantee the club would be around in 5 years time, at the time I am sure we all asked for re-assurance that the club would indeed endure and in my opinion this should have come from the board, but it seems this mistake of not easing the wounds of the clubs "Ardent" fans is what started all this process, indeed Ovo not playing the good cop to Denis's Bad cop.
Ovo has said to me, if he is voted out, he is voted out, not much more he can do about that and he will move on with his life. I truly believe that is what he is doing.
While Stagger and others will romanticize Ovo and deride Fitzy, singling Ovo out as a lone or minority voice on the board, the fact of the matter is Ovo was made chairman of the football club so long ago, because he had and still continues to have a very large base of support within the club. He is indeed well liked around the club. It was not large enough to save him, but indeed he didn't have the comparative multi-million dollar budget for PR. I am not saying 3P did have that sort of money, but their words and accusations when sent to the telegraph, indeed enticed more people to vote than ever before. If one was to use positive talk for that during the leagues club campaign, I think it would have cost a great deal of paid for editorial to get published. But these articles encouraged many to vote, by it would appear a week of scandalous articles leading into the election, all of them linking back to high profile issues the club has gone through in the recent past, including Fitzy's lack of a guarantee of the clubs future.
Do I think Alan is a shrewd business man? Yes his track record seems to support that. He worked at Hardies all the way to the National Logistics manager for the company, he managed their sponsorship and had them involved in the two biggest sports of the day, the Bathurst 1000 or the Hardie 500 and then Hardie 1000 as it was called and the NSWRL competition though Title sponsorship of the Parramatta Eels club. This is how he came to the Parramatta club.
Back then the sponsors of the club formed a committee to help the club with his dealings, from this committee, Alan stood for and was elected to the board of the Football club in the early 80's and Leagues club in 1986. He became chairman of the football club in another voting coup in which he survived and being the only member of the Football club board that was on the Leagues club board, was made Chairman.
Alan as Chairman has over seen some of the great ramping up of this club. Indeed pulling it out of the chook raffle stage to a professional and well run club. To a point where the club didn't need members to survive, it needed gamers to survive. I think that is still a truth of the club, and one the new club would be at great folly to change.
Now a number of people have had concerns over our club leading the drive to lower the pokie tax, believing incorrectly I think that this was the clubs only out, also deriding the push into property development as not going to sustain the club long term or not Maximizing on its profits. I know Alan was behind the property purchasing and the development as such. At the time of their original proposal these plans if allowed to be carried out with expediency could have seen a tidy windfall for our club, but alas with all things some plans don't go exactly to plan.
But the purchasing of the properties did more than just give us somewhere to put our profits so as they could increase with the property prices. The club purchased these premises strategically, and it means no one lives within a certain distance of the club who doesn't have the club as its land lord. Basically ensuring the club could stay open in the days of 24 hour operation and these days stay open past midnight or 1am on weekends without complaint. So while the properties would add 1% or less than that a year, the untold value of these property investments was shown in the broader terms to the money the club made by staying open from 1:00am to 10:00am. Indeed when other clubs were shutting their doors, other gamblers were flooding to Parra Leagues likes moths to a flame.
The new Chairman of the club, Roy Spagnolo, said to me during the campaign that he was disappointed that over 50 years all the club had for its savings was the $21 million worth of investment properties and that he had personally not lost anything because of the GFC. I thought about that for a very long time, the club has $21 million worth of savings. I know the club was in a very tight bind financially for the late 1980's and early 1990's when it was undergoing its re-fit and that it had to borrow money from a local lender as the banks would not finance the club to continue on. That says to me that all of the $21 million in property and indeed we know we have sold some of it recently has come to the club in the last 15 years. It is also easy to not lose money when you can invest in properties where ever you like. But when you want to ensure the clubs opening times, (and for those that didn't know one of the clubs new promotions is called open 21 which states the club is now open from 9:00am to 4:00am daily.) You need to or in some other way control the properties in and around your club.
I will state this for those with the 10 word answers.
1, Our club lost 9 million worth of Value last year, but only about 1.3 million worth of cash and most of that was in donations made, one of which was to the two blues rugby union of $500,000 and that was to be the last time it was made. The way the clubs finances have been tracking over the past 3 annual reports or summaries I have read, we have been shallowing, and in 07 made a good line for the apex of the corner, however the drop in property values was a bit of an oil slick on the road you couldnt see and has pushed the club wide, I have no doubts regardless of what board is controlling the leagues club it will return to profit during this year.
2, Yes we haven't won a premiership for 23 years, I know I have been there two, but our club has had the side to win the premiership I would think at least 4 times in the last 10 years, I don't blame the board for those sides not following through.
