http://footballtoday.news/features/time-for-the-faceless-men-to-be-held-to-account

Way more pointed than her recent analytical pieces. But spot on again.

It begs the question - why was Lowy anywhere near these meetings. He is an employee.

Finally someone pointing fingers at the states. They need to be held to account. Their behaviour yesterday towards Australian football was disgusting and pathetic. Lowy was always going to use every trick in the corporate book. They put their own self interests ahead of their constituents. Populist politics is gaining momentum yet these boardroom lackeies can't see that they are behaving as badly as pollies and have lost the people. Fkn corporates and money. The devils in our society for centuries.

true

Ppl like Lowy don't stay rich by rolling over or playing fair.

Not so sure he is an employee.  Employees can be chairman but not all chairman are employees.   He might be paid sitting fees but he is probably not on a salary . . . .

@ lightbulb

He's employed by the State Federations/HAL - that's how it works.

All the board are unpaid positions.  They get paid expenses when on FFA business.

Perhaps not by FFA ....... Dodd did, but others have business links to Lowy family outside of FFA.

@ GyFox

Pay doesn't come in to it though.

The congress appoint the board to run the ffa on their behalf. Money doesnt enter into the equation, whether they are paid or not, whether they are full time of not, they are appointed by State/HAL organisations to represent them.

Lowy is reportedly telling the State Feds what to do, that's the equivalent of a Company Director telling shareholders what to do - its wholly inappropriate and speaks volume for the gutless men that run the States (NSWs excepted apparently).

The constitution allows the directors to be paid for doing work for the FFA not for their board work.

it also pays for nods. 

Bonita the bitta...........ala Tony Abbott

As much as i don't like Steven, I wonder how much of this has been the states hiding behind the FFA from the beginning. The states should have far less power, and I've always thought the states as somewhat independent bodies should be put to an end. The state feds should be nothing more than a department of the FFA. Ive always had time for Bonita, but it gets tiring reading her endlessly negative one sided articles.

@ Frenchman

If the states became departments of the FFA then who represents the game? Under the current model that would only leave the A League clubs.

There's no doubt the States, NSWs aside, deserve criticism for their recent behaviours. But a consequence of the Lowy's command, conquer and control policy is that good leaders don't stay around very long. If you're a high-performance individual you leave early because there's no place for you unless you like being told what to do.

The Lowy model was played out perfectly this week - let me take you in to a room and I will tell you what to think and do. And you will think and do exactly as I say.

The first step in fixing the States is to get rid of Lowy. The second is to make them more transparent and accountable, neither of wwhich can happen while the lowy model is in play.

The state feds represent 99.7% of registered football players, most of the club officials, volunteers and match officials.  Why should they have less power?  Maybe their vote could be split to include representatives of their constituent parts but the thing that shouldn't happen is that the A-League clubs and the professional players union that represent the other 0.3% of players shouldn't have 40% of the vote.  

Power to the grassroots players who pay their own way then out of their private wealth pay a dividend to both the states and the feds in the form of capitation fees and levies totalling in excess of $20m pa. and on top of that voluntarily contribute a significant part of the A-League clubs revenue in the form of memberships and gate takings.  Hmm... maybe they could get the FFA to pay their transport costs to games.  ;)

@ GyFox

I like a lot of what you post sadly the way you've written that sums up much of the thinking in football: "For me to be right, someone else must be wrong" and "for me to be a hero, someone else must be the villain".

In your post, the A League clubs need to be the villain which doesn't help the overall argument.

It's estimated that grassroots (everyone but HAL) raises $260m+ in registration fees alone every year and by your number pays $20m back to the FFA - that's about 8%

The A League estimate is it raises $75m of which the ffa retains about $50m - that's about 66%. If I was paying the ffa that much I'd want them to pay more than just my transport costs.

In absolute terms the A league contributes double the revenue to the FFA than grassroots, that's despite generating less than a third of their revenues.

So who's the villain?

It's not grassroots ... and it's not the A League.

We have somehow created an FFA monster in the middle of all this that does exactly as it pleases and is accountable to no one. There's the villain.

The A League and grassroots need to combine and fight for what's right and not for what they and they alone want. Only dickheads like the Lowy's prosper out of that, and I bet there's a hundred other people like Lowy waiting for their turn at the top so they can role around like pigs in shit while someone else pays for everything.

If football is to win, this internal "us v them" BS needs to stop.

The thing that you miss is that the A-League clubs constantly claim to be the hero and they aren't.  They are simply another important part of football with no more right to determine the direction of football than any other part of it yet they negotiated a vetoing right at the congress.

The FFA doesn't keep 66% of the money the A-League raises.  It returns some of it to the clubs as cash payments, the contra is spent by external bodies in the purpose of the A-League, the FFA picks up the central costs and the League operating costs and redistributes some to its other activities.  The only amount that is not spent on the A-League is the redirection.  Unfortunately the quantum of this is not disclosed in the FFA's accounts but in a speech a number of years ago to the AGM Frank Lowy revealed that the cost to the FFA's budget of the A-League was $32m.  At the time the distribution to the clubs totalled $19m so the additional cost met by the FFA was $13m.  Since that time the distribution to the clubs has risen first to $25m and now to $35m p.a. (proposed for this coming season only).  Using these figures the cost of the A-League will be at least $48m for the coming season not allowing for increased costs due to inflation, additional payments for full time match officiation, TV refs etc and the additional cost of flying A-League clubs around for FFA Cup games so lets round the figure off to $50m for discussion purposes.  The result using all these sketchy figures is $25m retained by the FFA or 33% using your $75m revenue figure.

The benefits the clubs obtain from the A-League set up are freedom from competition, security of tenure, absence of normal football costs like transfer fees, take over of player and tax debt if they fail financially, free access to the product of the grassroots etc.  What value should be placed on these benefits to the club?  Are the clubs on such a bad wicket?  Of course there are also negatives to the clubs like restricted access to sponsors that also come in to consideration so how much is reasonable for the clubs to contribute to football as payment for the privilege of being the elite.

@ GyFox

"The thing that you miss is that the A-League clubs constantly claim to be the hero" ....

Can you give one example of that?

"The FFA do not keep 66% of the revenues" ...

Yes they do. The competition raises just over $75m and just over $25m is returned. That's a 66% retention. Yes some additional money is used in other expenses but these are not transparent so subject to speculation but it is still retained.

But if we accept 66% is reasonable and fair then they are the conditions a second division must operate under. It isn't imo and the HAL should be returning about 8% to the FFA in a similar way to grassroots.

It's very simple - the HAL should exist on the revenues it raises and not expect subsidies from anywhere else in football.

Same with a division 2, if viable stand up and get on with it.

Same with grassroots; if we can't survive on $260m+ every year then make cut backs or raise more money.

The exception is the various national teams, here the football community should stump up some cash but with FIFA handouts, sponsorship and the prostitution of games to the highest bidder this shouldn't be a burden.

I have two hats in this debate - I support Roar and I work/coach/volunteer within my local junior club. We want nothing from the FFA, the NPL or the HAL other than respect and reasonable treatment. We never see the FFA but we pay for them, the NPL act like a bunch of elitist pricks trying to poach our best players all the time (well, not best, just anyone that can pay $2k in fees) and Roar are pretty much invisible despite us being 6km from Suncorp.

There's a lot to work on but let's not pretend any side is better than the other, that just feeds Lowy's sort. And you want to talk about an "elitist, locked out competition" I'll give you one. It's called the NPL - why don't we have full p/r into and out if the league? It's one thing for the AAFC to demand it for themselves but it's another thing to give it to the 600+ clubs below them. Time to end the bane-calling, BS and double standards surely?

well said. i really feel we are heading back to the future. Johny Warren always said that what stopped our game moving forward was that we had a political executive that resulted in compromise to preserve vested interests. The game is much bigger than A League clubs and we'll take 30% of everything PFA.

Angry reacts only.

-PB

I wonder why a football loving chap such as yourself, so frightened of the game being brought into disrepute, would attack Bonita in order to defend the FFA, who sacked Bonita for complaining about the dodgy middle men they were in bed with...

Because some people don't want things to change for their benefit as it would affect their status quo overall.

Towards the end of 2015, and following six months of turmoil after the FIFA arrests in May of that year, Transparency International (TI) published a table of good governance of each of FIFA’s member associations. TI nominated published financial reports, organisational charter, annual activity report and code of conduct/code of ethics as the bare minimum of what was required. As we reported here, TI gave FFA 50%, and found that 36 football associations did better than FFA, and 28 were equal with it. 

As part of the reforms passed by the FIFA Congress in 2016, it was agreed that member associations would also follow the same minimum measures of governance contained within the FIFA reforms which drew on the recommendations of TI, amongst others.

It’s pleasing to see that if the same measure was taken today, FFA would score 100% from TI - which is how it should be and what we would expect.

While FFA has always published its organisational charter by way of the Constitution, and its Code of Conduct, the combined impetus of the FIFA reforms and the $5 million promised by FIFA President Gianni Infantino have had their impact in terms of publishing FFA’s annual financial statements and producing an activity report.

But what about the nine state federations who hold 90% of the power within the current FFA Congress?

They are the members or owners of FFA. Last week, they twice acquiesced to the demands of the FFA Chairman and allowed FIFA and the AFC to leave the country without an agreed form of FFA Congress.

Are these federations exemplars of good governance? Do they meet the minimum standards of transparency and accountability set by TI and required as part of the FIFA reforms?

How would they fare on the TI league table? We take a look using the same measures and methodology as TI.

	Financial statements	Organisational Charter	Annual Activity Report	Code of Conduct
FFA	✓	✓	✓	✓
NSW	✓	✓	✓	✓
NorthernNSW	✓	✓	✓	Juniors
VIC	✓	✓	✓	✗
QLD	✗	✓	✓	✓
WA	✓	✓	✓	✓
SA	✗	✓	✓	✓
TAS	✗	✓	✗	✓
ACT	✗	✓	✗	✓
NT	✗	✓	✗	✓

Financial Statements

• In the case of NSW, Northern NSW, Victoria and Western Australia, full financial statements are provided.
• Queensland and South Australia provide a small amount of information and Tasmania provides a less than two-page written statement from its treasurer but we do not consider these are sufficiently accountable to their members as required by the FIFA reforms and as measured by TI.
• Queensland has gone backwards in terms of information-sharing compared with the previous financial year. They inform their members that FQ made a surplus of $212,000 in FY2016, a decrease of $475,000 from the previous financial year, but they do not give the revenue or expense total. What we do know is that 58% of FQ's revenue is from its member clubs, 26% from player registration fees and 2% from sponsorship. On the assumption that FQ's revenue stayed steady on the previous financial year, that means a mere $137,400 of their revenue came from sponsorship. If that is so, it seems incredible (and more later). 

Organisational charter

• If the Constitution is available online, we have marked this as being met. Some federations also have a strategic plan, mostly building on FFA's 20-year plan.

Annual Activity Report

• All but Tasmania, the ACT and NT publish an annual activity report. Tasmania publishes a short written statement from their president, which it refers to as an activity report, but this is not considered to be sufficiently accountable to its members.

Code of Conduct/Code of Ethics

• All federations except Northern NSW and Victoria has a link to the national Code of Conduct. Northern NSW has a Junior Code of Conduct, but no link to the national code; Victoria appears not to have a code of its own or a link to the national code.

Observations

The standard of the documents is highly variable. To some extent, that may be a function of available resources but as the state federations are the power base of the Australian football community, and as world football has a job to do in rebuilding trust in its governance, state federations should be giving priority to meeting minimum standards of good governance.

As a start, it would be helpful if minimum standards were developed on the content of charters, codes and reports, on their presentation and on where and how to present them on websites. This information shouldn't be difficult to find but in many instances, it is. 

The variation in financial statements, in particular, means it is difficult to make any useful comparisons. Each federation chooses to present different revenue and cost items. However, unlike FFA which no longer reports on revenue breakdown, the four federations that do provide audited financial statements give a revenue breakdown. 

It would also be helpful if the FFA website published a direct link to the relevant publications for each state federation, to assist the football community. 

Australian football's governance table | FootballToday.news

ACT has published audited Financial Statements and full activity report but I can't see a link to them on their new website.  Hopefully it is just an oversight because it was linked on their old site.
https://issuu.com/cfevents/docs/cf_annual_report_2016-17_web

I would really like to see uniformity in reporting where possible.

Best headline ever.