Football governance is where the Heart is

Scott Munn, Manny Galanos and John Didulica are respectively the CEO, a major investor and the football operations manager of Melbourne Heart. So what?

Nothing really, it’s just that when Mark Arbib announced the Smith review into football governance, Scott Munn hit Twitter, tweeting: “Reviews are lovely. If you don’t adhere to recommendations it is a waste of time and taxpayers funds.”

A couple of days later Munn tweeted some more: “Unfortunately many parts of Crawford report were binned. Spoke with him early last year and he voiced issues… As I said previously if action does not result from review then pointless (sic).”

This leads us to Crawford’s key recommendations 31 and 33, and to Manny Galanos.

As The Age reported on December 15, 2003:

“The Victorian Soccer Federation is risking a head-on confrontation with the new powerbrokers of Australian soccer due to its bid to alter some of the sweeping reforms the Frank Lowy-led Australian Soccer Association is initiating.

The VSF has called a meeting in Melbourne tomorrow for any interested state or territory soccer federations that share its concerns about the massive constitutional overhaul the ASA plans to introduce early next year. But, soccer leaders from NSW have said they support the Lowy team’s reforms and won’t be attending.

The ASA, backed by the Crawford report and the authority of the Federal Government (which has guaranteed the sport $15 million to support its development, providing the Crawford recommendations are introduced) wants to ‘democratise’ the sport’s administration, giving its grassroots participants greater say in policy-making forums.

VSF chairman Manny Galanos has no problems with widening the franchise for all those with a vested interest in the game’s development, but argues that clubs and their officials are the big losers in this move to participial democracy.

Under the ASA’s new model constitution, voting rights on policy issues within states would be held by ‘registered particpants’ in the game: players, referees and coaches. Clubs – the group that hitherto has held the biggest say in determining policy – would lose their positions of executive power.

The ASA argues that extending the franchise better reflects the real needs of the game, as determined by its most important stakeholders – the participants – while loosening the grip of a class of apparatchiks it believes have frustrated reform. Few of the club presidents, executives or officials would qualify as registered participants, and consequently would not have a vote.

Galanos says it is unreasonable to deny the clubs, as entities, a key say in the organisation of the sport’s administration, pointing out that at AFL level, where an independent commission manages the game, the clubs at least get to vote for commission members.

“There is no other sporting organisation in the world that denies its clubs a vote,” Galanos said. “I’m trying to do the right thing by the clubs in Victoria. They should not be wiped off the planet in terms of getting a vote.”

An ASA official said he had had talks with up to 50 organisations since the Lowy team took control, and only Victoria had raised any arguments against the reform process.”

Following the announcement of the Smith review, Professional Footballers’ Association CEO Brendan Schwab weighed in, with a list of issues the PFA wants examined by the forthcoming review. Among these is the reasons the Crawford report was not fully implemented.

Galanos’s football manager at Heart, John Didulica, is, coincidentally, a former PFA official – if Didulica introduced Schwab to Galanos, Galanos could explain personally and save everyone some time.

But we digress – after his stint at PFA and before he took on the Heart job, Didulica was legal counsel to FFA.

Football governance probably falls outside Didulica’s current job description, but as a former legal counsel to Lowy’s regime, constitutions and principles of governance are not areas he is unfamiliar with.

In 2008, some Victorian registered participants wrote to FFA querying why they’d been disenfranchised from their state federation’s elections contrary to Crawford recommendations 31 and 33: What about Crawford’s reforms, and where was the vote both the federal government and Lowy had promised them?

FFA referred the letter to its lawyers, and in early 2009 a response was received from FFA’s Legal Counsel (Regulatory), John Didulica.

“FFA has developed a ‘model’ base constitution for adoption by each of the state Member Federations. The model constitution which forms the basis of Football Federation Victoria’s Constitution reflects the principles of governance contained within the Crawford Report.

“Accordingly FFA is confident that the constitution of the FFV creates an appropriate mechanism for genuine grassroots involvement in representation within FFV.”

Got all that?

Munn says many parts of Crawford were binned.

Galanos went to war with Lowy’s regime to see that many parts of Crawford were binned.

Didulica says the new constitutions reflect Crawford’s principles of governance.

Munn says that unless a review’s recommendations are implemented in full they’re a waste of time and money.

Galanos did his best to see that Crawford’s recommendations 31 and 33 weren’t implemented, and ultimately they were not implemented.

Didulica says the new constitutions reflect Crawford’s principles of governance.

See the problem? Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it. Exactly which history is it that the rest of us shouldn’t be forgetting so we aren’t doomed to repeating it?

Warwick Smith could do worse than start his review at Melbourne Heart and try to reconcile, for the edification of the rest of us, the respective takes of Munn, Galanos and Didulica on football governance under Lowy’s regime.

Smith had better come up with something quick. Governments repeatedly intervening, promising the punters the world and then handing the reins back to myopic football powerbrokers with just enough rope to hang the game again, could soon wear very thin with the rank-and-file – if it hasn’t already.