Parramatta Eels directors at war in Supreme Court in ugly lead-up to club elections
Date
March 25, 2015 - 8:00PM
Chris Barrett and Daniel Lane
The upcoming Parramatta election shapes as being as ugly as any in their tumultuous recent history, with a director leading the opposition ticket against the current board heading to the Supreme Court to contest disciplinary charges against him that threaten to unseat his bid for power at the Eels .
A date is not set for the Parramatta Leagues Club poll but members are set to vote for the board that runs the NRL club on May 11, deciding between tickets led by chairman and former premiership player Steve Sharp and a rival group, the Parramatta Professionals, fronted by another present director Lawrence Shepherd and aligned with former Eels supremo Denis Fitzgerald.
However, the candidacy of Shepherd, the managing director of poker machine company Independent Gaming, is under a cloud of claims of misconduct that have caused his club membership to be suspended pending a hearing before the board.
The issue has escalated so far that Shepherd on Tuesday sent his lawyers to the Supreme Court just hours before he was due to face a membership hearing. It was subsequently postponed and the matter will be back before the court on Friday.
There are three claims against Shepherd, who two years ago won a seat on the board as an ally of Sharp. One stems from his alleged behaviour inside a NSWRL corporate box at a Bruno Mars concert at All Phones Arena last March. The others are over conversations he is supposed to have had with club executives threatening their jobs. Shepherd vehemently denies all of the allegations, believing they have been manufactured in an effort to prevent him standing at the election.
It is claimed he acted in an inappropriate manner in the box, hosted by Paul Langmack, asking loudly for alcohol, shouting out: "Where's the sauv blanc?" It had also been suggested he had tipped a beer over then NRL chief operating officer Jim Doyle, who is now chief executive at the New Zealand Warriors.
Doyle told Fairfax Media he had no issue arising from the night, suggesting Shepherd had accidentally kicked a drink in the dark as he arrived at his seat.
"What actually happened was I was at the Bruno Mars concert with my wife and Paul Langmack (who) runs the NSW box and (Shepherd) was in there as well in the row behind us sitting down watching it," Doyle said. "He sort of knocked his beer a little bit on the floor, that was it. No problem."
Shepherd is further claimed to have spoken in an intimidating way to Parramatta Leagues Club chief executive Bevan Paul last September and Eels football chief Scott Seward during the Auckland Nines in January, suggesting they would lose their jobs after the election.
Paul declined to comment on Wednesday and Seward did not return calls.
"As the matter is in front of the court, the club is unable to make any comment or provide details in relation to this issue," said Parramatta Leagues Club Group head of communications Joshua Drayton in a statement.
FItzgerald defended Shepherd on Wednesday.
"Lawrence is an ideal person to have on the leagues club board," Fitzgerald said. "He has great experience in licensed clubs and dealing with them . . . he's been dealing with them for over 30 years running his successful business and he knows most of the CEOs and chairmen of the big clubs.
"He basically knows the business more so than any of the other current directors of the leagues club. I'm just amazed that the majority of the board should take a drastic step of suspending Lawrence's membership."
Shepherd is not the only Eels official to have had his membership stripped recently. Members from the previous Spagnolo board have had their memberships suspended over allegations of impropriety detailed in a damning Office of Liquor, Gaming and Racing report into the club. Parramatta face a $275,000 fine over that affair while it was recommended that ex-directors implicated be banned for three years from standing for a registered club election.
That OLGR report into the Roy Spagnolo era also delved into the membership tampering scandal that preceded the last PLC election in 2013. As a result 131 people found to have had tampered or fake memberships and have had them cancelled are barred from voting in May.
