By Luke Brailey
Back to Belmore Inc. President
June 7, 2008
There is no question that the huge backlash at the Bulldogs AGM earlier this year reflected the mood of a football club fed up to the back teeth with an administration that they perceived to be out of touch and distant from their supporters.
Despite an outlandish negative campaign mounted against director Ray Dib by former media manager Chris O'Brien, the intense resentment personally directed at the previous Board could not be shaken. It is difficult to recall a more calamitous bungle in Board elections and vividly demonstrated how internal administration discipline at the Bulldogs had come apart at the seams in the closing week of the Annual General Meeting.
The previous regime's lack of interest in addressing the problems facing Belmore Sports Ground demonstrated an appalling naivete. The former administration had neither the foresight nor the interest in identifying the underlying causes of Belmore's dilapidated state. Their fundamental error was to think that Bulldogs supporters would simply accept the club's decision to abandon their spiritual kennel in the same way as they ultimately embraced home games at Homebush in the late 1990s. However, severing all ties with our traditional heartland was a fundamental affront to purists. A large part of the Doggies' traditional support base felt betrayed by a Board keen to compromise the club's traditions.
As the Board that instigated the relocation to the Homebush precinct, they can be blamed for chartering the anti-Belmore map that has obliterated the club's proud traditions. Abandoning Belmore in early 2008 was devastating for Doggies' supporters but it also became a lens through which these disenchanted supporters re-evaluated the Board. The abandonment of our spiritual kennel exposed the duplicity of a CEO who had wanted to "build back the club to its proud traditions" [SMH; 2/4/2004] but ultimately sold out in an attempt to gain mass appeal.
The previous Board underestimated two things: the capacity of Back to Belmore to campaign, and the fans' keen desire to get back to our rightful home ground. It might have been that the move to Homebush could've received the go-ahead by the members if they had been allowed to discuss it before ex-CEO Malcolm Noad signed a 15-year agreement with the Homebush Bay venue. We'll never know because Mr Noad never gave the members that opportunity.
It is interesting to compare the former CEO's personal commitment to building the club back to its proud traditions with his contemptuous dismissal of Belmore. Mr Noad's initial pledge was commendable but why did he fail to act on Belmore Sports Ground? Regrettably, Noad displayed a John Howardesque dismissiveness towards Belmore, making it a taboo issue, reminiscent of the former PM's attitude towards subjects like the republic, climate change and the apology to the Stolen Generation.
In an eerie parallel with the Bulldogs' situation, Howard lost the 2007 federal election on the back of unpopular industrial relations reforms and his Coalition Government's failure to act on climate change and global warming. There are no prizes for seeing the amazing similarities with the Bulldogs, whose decision to abandon Belmore and relocate to Homebush, which was never run before the voting members of the football club, and their failure to tackle entrenched problems that have crippled Belmore Sports Ground are likely to go down as two of their fatal errors.
The club needs to confront extremely serious challenges that have affected Belmore Sports Ground and the time to act is now.
