Paul Kent: Once mighty Bulldogs going from bad to worse
The Bulldogs are being torn down by ambitious personalities each driven by their own unbending belief that they are what is right for the club. You cannot help but be impressed by their magnificent self-belief, says PAUL KENT.
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There is nothing like a good boardroom coup, this being rugby league, and all, to get you up in the morning.
Canterbury’s warring tribes are at it again, and so shortly after the Bulldogs held a breakfast presentation on Tuesday to formally close down one of those seasons that best be forgotten, a petition was delivered with the required number of signatures to out Bulldogs chair Lynne Anderson and two of her closest boardroom allies, Paul Dunn and John Ballesty.
Anderson and her team swept to power several years ago when they outed the old board headed by Ray Dib under the pledge they would restore the Bulldogs reputation as the “family club”.
It was a warm-hearted notion, though how successful that has been remains to be seen.
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To be sure, it was strange family values that revealed itself over the weekend with reports that one of the club’s few warriors, Aiden Tolman, was ordered before his final game to clear his locker and return his car by general manager of football Steve Price.
It’s hardly a family you want to be part of. Or maybe Price is merely tone deaf.
While all the departing players and staff were asked to return their laptops, phones and swipe cards, the timing was all wrong.
Tolman was later forced to deny the true reason he withdrew from his final game was in protest to Price’s demand.
For weeks the Bulldogs have been in a waiting game as rumour spread that a petition for an extraordinary general meeting was being collected to out the club’s powerbrokers.
Chief executive Andrew Hill immediately sent the petition to the club’s solicitors to confirm it was all in order.
Hill is practising being Switzerland at the moment.
He now has 21 days to call the meeting and then must give members a further 21 days notice to attend, wondering how he assembles all the members inside a room with the State Government’s COVID laws forbidding any gathering of larger than 150 people, all while trying to avoid being shot to bits from both sides.
This should be a television show.
Part of the mystery is that no party has yet to confirm they are behind the petition and nobody can confirm who plans to take over the board should the trio be kicked to the curb.
The usual suspects have all denied being party to the petition.
It is understood the petition was driven by three sponsors at the club who have lost faith in Anderson and her faction.
One sponsor is angry that, after being denied a request to sponsor the club, and later hearing it was given to the Laundy family for free this season and at a discount rate the next two.
Another sponsor is angry he was never given a chance.
Certainly the politics have escalated in recent weeks.
Ambition has always been the fuel for the great ones but, as it goes, fuel causes the fire, too.
The Bulldogs are aflame at the moment.
The club is being torn down by ambitious personalities each driven by their own unbending belief that they are what is right for the club.
You cannot help but be impressed by their magnificent self-belief.
Doesn’t necessarily make it right, though. After all, the first quality of every malevolent dictator is delusion.
Untangling what has happened in the decline of the Bulldogs requires a tobacco pipe and deerstalker cap.
The petition follows boardroom unrest earlier this month when Canterbury Leagues Club chairman George Coorey was removed after the football club commissioned a report into sexual misconduct allegations against him.
Coorey was removed in a fiery boardroom vote and replaced by Dunn.
Having said that, the report is hardly a smoking gun.
Compiled by private investigation company Barringtons, the barely two-page report states that the alleged victims refused to speak to the investigative company and merely had their allegations corroborated by a third party.
But the report had no detail of what the allegations were.
So, in effect, Coorey was overthrown as chairman because he could not defend himself against unknown allegations made by anonymous women.
It shows the level of politics being played inside Canterbury, which continue.
The Barringtons report was commissioned by football club chair Anderson even though she holds no Leagues Club role.
Anderson ordered the investigation, presumably, on the strength of the football club board members carrying a majority share on the Leagues Club board.
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Yet the Bulldogs’ board was aware of the allegations when Coorey was reappointed Canterbury Leagues Club chairman earlier this year, the investigation ordered only after the allegations were reported in the media.
Anderson and Coorey had previously acted as allies in the initial overthrow of the football club board headed by Dib in 2018.
Coorey was previously a Dib supporter — a faction that included his brother Arthur Coorey — but was installed as Leagues Club chairman shortly after supporting the Anderson campaign.
As for who replaces the three, if they are removed, the sponsors have enough faith in the remaining four board members to pick the right people.
You can’t say they’re not an optimistic lot.
Originally published as Paul Kent: Once mighty Bulldogs going from bad to worse