Business high-flyers to contest election for FFA board

A field of up to eight candidates will likely contest an election later next month for positions on a new look FFA board.

Joseph Carozzi. Picture: Sam Ruttyn

A field of up to eight candidates will likely contest an election later next month for positions on a new-look Football Federation Australia board with a number of high-powered business people believed to be among those who have been nominated.

The Australian has been told at least three contenders are “from the top end of town”, with one believed to be Joseph Carrozzi, managing partner at accounting and advisory firm PwC, while sources suggest high-profile contender former Labor senator Stephen Conroy is believed to be out of the running.

Carrozzi is a member of numerous boards, advisory panels and audit committees. He is also deputy chairman of the GWS Giants AFL Club, chairman of the Sydney Harbour Federation Trust, chairman of the Centenary Institute for medical research and a board member of the NSW Institute of Sport.

He holds a bachelor of commerce and bachelor of law from the UNSW and is an admitted barrister at law in NSW.

Current board member and former Socceroo Danny Moulis, former Soccer Australia chairman Remo Nogarotto, former Socceroo Craig Foster, former Capital Football boss Heather Reid and Judith Griggs, former CEO of Australian Grand Prix Corporation, are also believed to have been put up for nomination.

The nomination of Griggs, who lives in London, is a controversial one. She chaired the Congress Review Working Group which came up with recommendations for radical changes to FFA’s Congress that were passed at an EGM on October 2. Those changes included a new voting structure as well as a call for the A-League to be independently run.

Nominations closed at 5pm yesterday but FFA are unlikely to reveal the names until the Nominations Committee review the list, which could be early next week. The AGM will likely be held on November 15.

Four elected positions and three appointed positions on the board are up for grabs following the resignation of chairman Steven Lowy and director Joseph Healy, while Chris Nikou and Simon Hepworth have stood down because their terms expired on October 16.

Hepworth will not contest the election but Nikou has put his hand up for another term. The intentions of current board members Crispin Murray and Kelly Bayer Rosmarin are uncertain.

It has been suggested Murray and Bayer Rosmarin, who are both strongly aligned to Lowy, won’t continue on the FFA board but there are now indications they may stay on so the board has some continuity.

As part of the CRWG it was recommended that 40 per cent of the FFA is made up of female representation, which means that if there is a board of nine, then at least three spots must be filled by women.

Doubt now surrounds who will succeed Lowy as chairman. Conroy, a football fanatic, had been widely touted as a possibility. The Australian revealed recently that his name has been thrown up for the hot seat.

A former director of the NSW Liberal party Nogarotto, who has the support of a number of member federations, loomed as a serious possibility if Conroy is not involved but late last night he confirmed that while he is happy to be nominated, he is ruling himself out of the race for chairman.

Carrozzi is also understood to be keen on the role, depending on the composition of the remainder of the board.

The Australian understands that the member federations and A-League clubs met over the course of two weeks to seek consensus on nominations to the board.

However, an agreement could not be reached and each member federation and the clubs were left to nominate their own candidates.

“It would have been ideal if we could have all agreed on the nominations. We tried hard and there were some good discussions but it wasn’t to be ... five into four wouldn’t go,” a source said. “But, that is fine. There is nothing wrong that.”