Mosquito Fleet wrote:
Carlton's problem is a legal problem in it's constitution.
Allowing directors four(4)terms of 3 years promotes stagnation, atrophy and clubs within clubs.
Members need greater rights to spill the board and administration.
If Carlton is ever going to have a successful future we need a new constitution
It's something that will be continued to be looked at, but it's
not the biggest problem. Members actually need better transparency to make a more informed choice. I recently sat on a sub-committee to make some changes to an organisations' constitution and you virtually need to do a swot analysis on all your rules. What we did do was have members vote on proposed changes but laid out the pro's and con's of what it would all mean well before the AGM.
Hawthorn, to their credit, have a 'Plebiscite to approve merger' guideline in their constitution, so a merge can only occur with 75% membership approval. It might seem like a big deal to Hawthorn people, but the club have done that merely to appease their supporters who are still a little worried a repeat of 1996 might happen.
But the reality is that the AFL is the major factor in this decision making process, as its constitution states that a merger requires AFL approval. A merger would also require approval from greater than one-third of the other clubs, as they maintained a veto right over mergers when handing administrative power over the independent AFL Commission back in the mid-eighties.
So not everything is as it seems with a constitution.
My change to our own constitution would be to have the clubs' board compromise of nine directors with each director serving a 3-year term before their position is put up for re-election at an AGM. Only one-third of the board would contest at each AGM due to the rolling structure of the terms of the directors. This structure safeguards the entire board from being ousted at a single AGM which I realise Mosquito Fleet might like - but it doesn't do anyone any good.