Changing the constitution is a good long-term protection goal but in the short term perhaps the successful applicant can try to seek a board resolution as to minimum mandatory member responses before changes of this magnitude are approved.

Guilty as charged in regards to the salt of the earth comment. I have said before all of the candidates seem well qualified. For me, I simply offer the time to meet, listen, respond and represent the members (and fans for that matter). This is the reason I have created the website (www.voteian.com.au) but more importantly have provided my personal mobile number on that site for anybody to call and to also be held accountable if I am successful. Reading blogs and debates are also great and can’t be ignored as they reflect the passion of the club.

Regards
Ian

Edit: None of this is aimed at nor designed to disrupt or negatively affect the club.

What? You want to change an efficiently run club, heading in the right direction and have the members polled on "important" issues?

Who decides which issues are important? You?

We already have 2 member elected board members...they made a decision based on information they'd gathered...you don't like it? Fair enough. Vote them out

All the rest is poppy cock and leads down the North Melbourne Road.

As long as my arse points to the ground any suggestion of this level of change will never get off the ground

Westerley, here's hoping your arse points in a different direction soon.

Changing/adding shareholders will not affect the way the club is run nor the direction it is heading. A change in corporate structure does not mean a change in admin staff, players, coaches or business practices so I don't see how it will change the efficiency with which the club is run.

Logo, colours, song = Important issues to supporters (i.e. the things we identify with and that remain constant despite changes in players and staff). None of which affect the running of the club.

If you think these changes had anything to do with the two MEDs or that the MEDs have any influence on board decisions then I think you're faith in them is misplaced but that's a point that's unlikely to be proven.

From the rest of your post you would seem to be in the "change is good unless it's too much change for my liking" camp.

Please feel free to give me some examples of how the plan (including raising $20 million from shareholders) would negatively affect the club and I'll do my best to counter.

Westerly, on what grounds are you claiming the club is being run efficiently? Have you seen the books? Certainly, we have a rather large revenue stream, but it would be extremely difficult from the outside looking in to suggest that the club is being run efficiently. Certainly we are in a good financial state, but most seem to attribute that to the previous administration.

I also do not share your assessment that the club is 'heading in the right direction'. At the end of last season I would have agreed with you, but the manner in which the recent changes were foisted up the members, and the response from those in charge, seem to indicate that the clubs is in fact headed in a direction that many of us are unhappy about.

Certainly the team and football department have been doing a good job, but I'm not sure the way the club is being run, and on-field success, are really linked.

I don't want to verbal svs1, but I think what he is advocating is changing the contitution so that member consultation is manditory in relation to a very narrow set of issues. Issues that are specifically important to the members, and form the basis of what many feel about the club. These would be explicitly stated, and I imagine would be limited to things like the name, song and jumper of the club. Nobody wants te members picking the team. If you could explain how such a change would harm our club, I'd like to hear it.

While a constitutionally written and mandated vote on a narrow, but fundamental issue like the club's identity, is a nice idea, I doubt there's much chance of getting it off the ground.

While I don't think members only boards are a good idea either, sometimes neither is the choice of CEO and President.

If you measure the clubs success and 'right direction' by its current on field status and its relationship with all its members, one KPI sucks. Whereas a few weeks ago neither did.

A change of suits wouldn't affect the club any more negatively than the recent one has.

In fact potential candidates could run on a platform of "I've got an MBA and I'm not steve", and be in with a crack.

... If you could explain how such a change would harm our club, I'd like to hear it.

Q - What's a camel?

A - A horse put togther by a committee.

I'm not for greater constraints on how the club makes decsion or greater numbers of member-elect board members.

With the odd highlight reflected upon - our history of poor on-field performance in the AFL has zero to do with the jumper and logo but it also has zero to do with our structure. It's just the people in the positions (admin, corporate, coaches, and sometimes players) made what in hindsight were poor decisions.

I think the current structure is fine for the management of a team in the national competition. Board has good mix of representatives considering, and it might just be these changes are another dumb decision.

The emotional attachment to the product is greater in this business but it's still a business operating against other competitors in the same market (other AFL clubs), Western Force, Glory, new NRL team and in broder market of how West Aussies spend their discretionary cash.

P1ss off your customers enough and they walk/riot - iSnack 2.0 - is an example.

Think supporters and members fall into these categories in respect of recent uniform and logo changes.

- I like the changes

- I don't like the decision but club has 'experts' in this stuff so I'll trust them and support decision like when the club took Hill ahead of Rich

- I don't care as long as we play good footy

- I don't like the changes but I'm too lazy/busy/apathetic/etc to do anything about it (and/or I like my current seats at Subi and don't want to sit in the rain or look into the setting sun)

- I hate the changes and I am doing something about it.

Club's wagering there is enough people in the first four categories of the classifications, and enough potential new members, seat-upgraders, etc that people in group 5 don't matter.

Be interesting to see if they're right between now and round 1 and beyond.

Drubbing, I believe Essendon's constitution contains a clause relating to at least the jumper (it's why they haven't had a 'clash' strip so far).

The biggest issue with the MEDs is that they are simply a token representation. When people marched the streets of Freo back in 2001, it wasn't just to get a token representation. The WAFC and the people running the club were doing everything possible to destroy it and the members weren't going to stand for it any longer. We've ended up with 2 MEDs who represent the members no more than the WAFC appointed board members and an easy 'out' for both the club and the WAFC to say we have our representation and we should (dare I say it) get over it.

Floating the club is not the answer. History tells us that it's fraught with danger and the AFL would never allow it. Only people power can push for the necessary changes. As svs1 said, this used to be the people's club. Only we can bring it back.

391, I don't think anyone wants to see the club with unnecessary constraints on making decisions. As you say, the jumper and logo have had nil effect on the club's on-field (and I'd say off-field) performance. I think the issue is that people are feeling disenfranchised and are looking for ways they can change that.

For example, North Melbourne's board have just gone and offered to play 7 of their 11 home games in an entirely different state. They didn't bother to consult their membership either. The difference is though, that their members get to vote on their performance and can remove those people if they don't believe they are representing them correctly or doing what is best for the club. Most clubs also have provisions for special meetings when club's make decisions which go against a large proportion of the membership.

Just on the current structure, it is the same structure that gave us all those years of failure and that crippling little debt we had back in 2001. We are at the mercy of the WAFC and we should never forget that.

"The biggest issue with the MEDs is that they are simply a token representation."

Always has been. It made the freaks settle down. Two people was never going to make any difference, and history tells us they're quite happy to be corporately assimilated anyway. I can't tell the difference between Steve and a Greive.

Straying back on topic, I got over the MED concept almost as soon is it was implemented. I don't believe MOBs are good, but well run admins are. Either way, you can end up with duds or dud decisions.

I also believe they've paid lip service to people's club idea too - but they paid it enough to work and feel real to people by doing stuff other clubs couldn't be arsed to. Now that's been dropped too, many of those people are gipped about that.

I don't know what the answers are, but I'd encourage all those Group 5's and Group 4's that aren't happy, but want someone to do something on their behalf - to put your name to something, because there are people who want to give the main issue of the changes, and the dodgy process that wrought them, some legs to see if it can get up.

But they need to demonstrate enough people give a toss.

They've changed the jumpers?!

SVS I am very happy to try and get constituional change. However there is no way the Club, The WA Football Commission and the AFL will ever allow The Fremantle Football Club to be floated; that's a pipe dream and is a deviation from the main objective, ensuring that our Club is able to recover from the deep division which have occured over the last few weeks.