Addressing the SMH Agenda:

Its been pretty plain over the past couple of days that the Sydney Morning Herald has ramped up its agenda to unsettle our club and has firmly put the blowtorch onto our Chairman, Damian Irvine. As is usual in these things, the truth is meekly lying somewhere under a frozen tundra of half truths, bullshit and petty revengeful lies. Let me address the 'issues' that the Herald believes will bring our club to its knees below.

D. Irvine approached Ricky to appoint Paul Gallen as captain: This can hardly be disputed as an email was leaked to the journo by a member of the board. My point is; so what? Paul Gallen is a sharks lifer, week in, week out he is head and shoulders above the rest of the players and leads the team with monumental, herculean efforts. I know for a fact that he was gutted to lose the captaincy last year. His penance for an idiotic comment has been paid. Uncle Trent, whilst being a fine player and leader has been wishy washy at best about his future and seemed certain to retire at years end. Irvine's email was merely a suggestion and was written with due respect and courtesy. Whats the big deal? He wasn't insisting Gal was instated at Trent's expense and from day 1 the decision was always Ricky's.



Irvine has lost the support of the board and will be asked to stand down. I'm not privy to boardroom conversations, but I do know that if this was true (and I highly doubt it) it cant even be done constitutionally. I'm pretty sure that for a chairman to be ousted this needs to go to a vote of the membership(Gows set up was different because he brought the club into disrepute, apparently). Irvine always struck me as the kind of bloke who would stand down if he felt he had lost the support of the majority of the board anyway. I'm willing to bet he has the entire board behind him, bar one or two Pierce supporters who are responsible for the leaks.

Debbie Feeney is dodgy. From what I understand, Debbie did a magnificent job in turning around the fortunes of the Marconi club. In doing this she had to step on a few toes by changing the clubs old world culture. Now that she has left, the knives are out. To me, this indicates that she is the woman for the job at the Sharks. Fearless, driven and with results on the board. There is no police investigation into the alleged fraud, because the Marconi club wont release all of the details. What does that tell you?

Ricky Stuart is a hard, proud man with contact across the media from decades in the game. He is able to pull favours in and he can be vicious and petty. Seems a strange coincidence to me that as soon as the pressure starts getting put on his job (and rightly so, 10 wins from 40 starts) that a slew of bad press comes out about the guy who is immediately responsible for his ongoing employment.

In other news, this TAUPO deal looks pretty awesome. Taupo city council have money in the bank and want to open peoples eyes to the possibilities of the area. If the Sharks are to profit from this, then well and good!

I'm off to Leichhardt on Saturday night. I'm frightened. Last time I felt this frightened we played the Roosters away, so lets go!