Richmond president Peggy O’Neal addressed the room at Richmond’s 2015 Annual General Meeting on Wednesday, December 9.
Below is a transcript of her speech:
I am delighted that so many of you are in attendance this evening.
And I am delighted to follow the financial report delivered by Rob Dalton. All of you will know how much our financial situation has improved over the past 8-10 years and we continue to view everything with a prudential financial lens because if we don't have financial strength, we can't achieve anything.
You may have seen in recent media that as a board, we are firmly of the belief that stability and unity has been critical to the progress we have made on and off the field in recent years.
Maureen Hafey’s Tiger life honor
This, combined with a clear vision and well executed plans, has seen us collectively take important steps to secure the Club's future. I can assure you that, with respect to football, this board is relentless in working with management in seeking further improvement.
However, stability and unity never come at the expense of renewal.
Stability and unity provide the platform for well-managed and informed change which is also critical for any organisation.
In our view, the Club needs to continue to evolve, not to rest on the progress we have made but to pursue the ultimate prize.
In all these endeavours, we ask: Who are the well-credentialed people that can help us get better?
This evolution is happening at all levels of the Club, some of it quite publicly, but just as much is happening in the background. Just because you might not have read about it in the press doesn't mean that it's not occurring.
At board level we have seen that with the addition of John O’Rourke. Brendon Gale, our CEO, has now also been appointed an executive director. So two of our 10 directors are new and this follows on from the addition of Kerry Ryan, who joined the board just two years ago.
On the field, our playing list continues to evolve – as you will shortly hear from our senior coach Damien Hardwick.
Nine new players have joined the Club this season – we will run with a list of 38 senior–listed players and six rookies – that is more than 20 percent of our playing list that has changed during the off-season. Over the past two years that change is almost 40 percent and all the while we have been playing increasingly competitive footy.
And let me use this occasion to welcome all the new players who join us tonight for the first time. We'll hear more about them a little later.
Craig McRae – a three-time premiership player with the Brisbane Lions – will coach our VFL team as part of our development program. Ryan Ferguson has also joined our development coaching team on a full-time basis. These appointments follow the addition of Ben Rutten as an assistant coach last year, so our coaching structure is not stagnant.
Club administration continues to look for improvement with the addition of new roles and re-structured departments so as to ensure that our resources are used in the most effective and efficient way while also keeping our focus on business critical activities.
We are also exploring some significant non-football revenue opportunities that we are hopeful will further secure the financial future of the Club. We are hopeful that we'll be able to report to you about these in the near future.
While we would all like to seize the ultimate prize sooner rather than later, that isn't the world of football these days. Our process has seen us improve so that we now have a strong business underpinning an improving football team.
But lest there be any misunderstanding, our vision is to build a Strong and Bold premiership Club, and we will do everything in our power to deliver the ultimate success to the Richmond faithful.
All the decisions we make are with that goal in mind, and the interests of members at its heart.
