Ballarat Football Netball League gets 12 board members after special general meeting

A major country league now has a full board after an urgent special meeting was held this week. See who has come in.

The Ballarat Football Netball League will be holding a special general meeting next week.

Three new members will join the Ballarat Football Netball League board after the league was forced to hold a special general meeting (SGM) on Wednesday.

Last week this masthead revealed an administration error at the annual general meeting (AGM) earlier this year resulted in five elected members being stood down after that meeting.
Elected chair Adrian Bettio was forced to stand aside with Robert Simmonds taking over as acting chairperson until this week’s special general meeting could be convened.

At that SGM the five members who were stood down were re-elected.

Bettio resumes his role as chairperson with Rod Ward, Barry Agg, Alissa Harris and Holly McEldrew heading back to the board.

They will be joined by new members Peter Carey, Kirsty McLean and Caitlin Hughes.

Five of 12 board members are women, which is the highest number ever on the Ballarat board.

“We haven’t had a full board for a couple of years, so it’s really good to have election numbers (to fill it),” Simmonds said.

“We’re going to have some strong female voices on board in the future, so that’s fantastic.”

Simmonds said the priorities for the new board were to start enacting plans to overhaul the junior structure of the league.

“We’re looking at potential age group changes and how the actual junior structure works,” he said.

“It allows us to do those big picture things now.

“It’s been put on hold a little bit (by the board issues).”

The 12 members will now represent the board until the next AGM is held at the end of the season.

EARLIER

A simple ‘frustrating’ administration error has forced the Ballarat Football Netball League to not only stand aside its chair but hold a special general meeting next week to vote in board directors.

A special general meeting will be held on Wednesday to vote in eight new board directors after the league found faults in the initial board election in February.

At that meeting the BFNL elected nine members – four current standing members in the second year of their two-year deal and five other incumbents who nominated for re-election.

However while that five nominated within the legislated time frame, they didn’t physically sign the paperwork until the night of the AGM.

Under the BFNL constitution this is disallowed.

“We had situations where because we got board members outside of Ballarat, they’d nominated and to sign the form they signed it off on the night they got there,” acting chairperson Robert Simmonds said.

“It’s one of those frustrating ones we didn’t tick the box on. The process wasn’t followed correctly for the five incumbents.”

These five were chair Adrian Bettio, Rod Ward, Barry Agg, Alissa Harris and Holly McEldrew.

All five have now renominated for Wednesday’s special meeting, alongside a host of other nominations.

There are 12 nominations for the eight positions on offer to bring the board to the maximum number of 12.

The Ballarat Football Netball League has been forced to hold a special meeting next week after a bungle in elections earlier this year. Picture: Hamish Blair

Simmonds is acting as the chairperson with Bettio standing aside.

He defended the time it’s taken to set up the meeting, arguing the process forced the BFNL to take the weeks needed to re-open nominations.

Simmonds said the situation, in some respects, was embarrassing but he added the league should now have enough members to fill the board.

“The real positive is it is an opportunity to fill our board,” he said.

“You could look it as it is ‘oh it’s an embarrassment and they haven’t done this and haven’t done that’.

“But it’s got more people putting their hand up to help the league out and we will have a stronger and bigger board.”

While the BFNL said clubs had faith in the league, it is understood several have been proactively putting forward their own candidates to fill the board positions, with some concerned by ongoing governance issues and wanting change.

The revelations follow another embarrassing incident last month in which the league lost a court battle with one of its junior clubs and was forced to overturn a ban which had prevented the Sebastopol under-17 team from taking to the field.