I can;t believe that some people are worried that these people aren;t well enough 'credentialed'. Try a quick google on them.
Di Bartolomeo has recently chaired (ie. been in charge of) an international consortium that won an 8.3billion (yes, with a B) contract for the North west rapid transit Link. It's the biggest transport construction in Australia atm! There's probably only 50 or 60 people in Australia who have the cajones, contacts and sheer ability to swing that.
This is while he was also Chairmen of a major NSW power company that owns two of the biggest power stations in Australia, the NSW president & deputy national president of the Australian Industry Group (the peak Australian industry lobby group) and on a few other boards. That's completely ignoring his career before that in Australian Defence Industries/ Thales - a massive company and some major transport roles . This guys cv is freakish.
Then there's Marina Go, a young, incredibly successful woman who just happens to hold the reins for most of the seriously influential womens magazines in Australia as well as a very powerful & successful background covering pretty much every major journalistic group in the country. Now who'd want that sort of skill set and influence?? & on top of that, we're trying to grow our brand with young families where most of the spending decisions are made by mum. A mum who has probably grown up reading and being influenced by Ms Go's body of work, ideas and ideals.
& Rosemary SInclair - very serious ties with Government, industry and academia across the whole spectrum of the telecommunications industry. The industry that determines what, when and how everyone sees, hears and follows the game.
These people are all very, very successful in their field(s) and those fields cover exactly what we need to have a top notch head office, and as Jack Gibson said - a successful team starts with a well managed front office. These 3 give us probably the best credentialled head office in the game, & I reckon they will prove that very quickly.
Also, generally people like that get there by being very cognizant of what they don;t know - and getting top notch experts to fill those skill gaps. The football manager will be a very important position.
On top of that, we are the first of the NRLs new business model clubs. It's in the NRL's interests for this to work, and work very well. They have a lot of skin in this game and that can only help us.
Thankfully that direction from the NRL has meant that we haven;t fallen for the typical attitude that we must have some ex-player knuckle draggers or club sycophants who've been riding on the game and the club's shirttails for their whole career because they happen to know how to run a sausage sizzle. That's what we (& most other clubs) have had for years and it means that Rugby League is 30 years behind where it should be.
This is a fantastic result for the club, second only to the 2005 premiership as the best thing that has happened to our club.
Great work from the NRL & the club!
ps - it's also interesting to see that the 2 Wests directors are getting very little coverage - they're a real estate agent (who also is a director for Wests Ashfield) and a Wests Ashfield director. Hopefully they can add a little local knowledge (although the 3 independents are all Sydney) and other than that they keep their ears open and their mouths shut.
