Central Football affiliate clubs are questioning the motives behind bankrolling a Hawke's Bay United club based in Napier and comprising mostly foreign players who leave after each season. Photo / File
Central Football affiliate clubs are questioning the motives behind bankrolling a Hawke's Bay United club based in Napier and comprising mostly foreign players who leave after each season. Photo / File
Major clubs from the five catchment areas are beginning to question Central Football's role in financially supporting its semi-professional franchise team in the national summer league and also demanding transparency in the amateur administrative body's dealings.
Among the key issues of concern are the $152,000 Thirsty Whale Hawke's Bay United owes Central Football, the multimillion-dollar development of facilities in Taranaki and the feeling among some clubs that the amateur body is competing with its own affiliates for young talent in winter.
Palmerston North Marist FC chairman Jason Flynn asks if there are any other New Zealand Football federations in the country which are keeping afloat financially a semi-professional outfit like Central Football.
"That money should be used for junior development or development of the wider game, not the organisation that is semi-professional because it should be able to stand on its own two feet," says Flynn.
The 49-year-old says Bay United should be self-sustainable and not requiring funds from Central Football.
"You can't run a club if you're being subsidised by a regional body [which] should be there for all the five regions, not a team based in Napier," says Flynn of Gisborne, Hawke's Bay, Manawatu, Taranaki and Whanganui in the Central Football catchment area.
"Hawke's Bay United is 'unfinancial' so it shouldn't be up to the regional body to prop it up artificially," he says, alluding to the franchise owing $152,000 as it embarks on the 2018-19 ISPS Handa Premiership campaign away against Eastern Suburbs on October 20.
Flynn says the disclosure of the debt wasn't widely known until it was revealed recently.
That is perhaps attributed to many clubs not attending AGMs any more but had they known there would have been an uproar much earlier.
"We're very upset because that's not what our subscription money should be going towards. It should go towards the development and administration of the game.
"If the [$152,000] was spent on developing players around the entire region then maybe we could have better players coming through and actually play for Hawke's Bay United ..."
He says there's no benefit for the other four affiliated regions in seeing a franchise team based and competing in Napier.
"Technically it is drawing money from everybody's registrations."
With Bay United recruiting overseas talent, what talent is developed in the catchment areas.
Flynn says the now defunct Youngheart Manawatu had good and bad years in the national summer league but Central Football hadn't come to their rescue fiscally.
"I think there's a distinct conflict of interest there with the board members all supporting Hawke's Bay United with a number of them on the Central and [Bay United] board, which is a concern."
Flynn says there's drastic need for Central Football to invest in coaches, referee development. Palmerston North Marist is the biggest club in the Central region with 18 clubs.
The lack of details surrounding the proposed development of facilities in Taranaki also is of concern.
"We think they may have committed $3 million towards that which we want to know where it's coming from."
Flynn says clubs feel Central Football is actually competing with its affiliates in some areas.
He says Central Football is running its FTC (federation training centres) programme during winter and through to summer, albeit consigned to the Bay, Manawatu and Taranaki.
The loss of youth talent from the clubs is significant and the vast majority of clubs don't want to see it overlapping into the winter when clubs compete against each other, says Flynn.
"It is the initiative of Brett Angell who has kind of bullied the regions into doing it although it wasn't supposed to be in direct competition but more of a trial situation and now it's snowballed into this strategical beast."
He says he has been in touch with numerous affiliate clubs, including those outside Manawatu, who harbour similar grievances and concerns.
Monty Ammundsen, the chairman of New Plymouth Rangers FC. Photo / Supplied
New Plymouth Rangers FC chairman Monty Ammundsen labels Central Football's role as "contradictory" to its mission statement to help develop young talent and foster relations with its communities.
"I've always been concerned about the commercial arm of Central Football and the same with Hawke's Bay United who aren't commercially viable so don't do it," says Ammundsen.
The 42-year-old says the Taranaki development is near the airport, on the outskirts of the city, amid a plan but "the secretive" air surrounding it is worrying.
"We don't know definitely what's going on or where the money is coming from for that and they haven't even consulted the stakeholders, which is the clubs.
"We've just been kept in the dark, really, and they've just taken charge."
Ammundsen says the clubs are drip feeding information tothe media.
He understands the Taranaki development is closer to to a ballpark figure of $18 million, with $3 million allocated for buying the land, for facilities that includes fields, changing rooms, clubrooms and a restaurant as well as a conference centre.
Clubs rely on charity funds, he says, but that's limited.
Ammundsen welcomes artificial pitches in a region where weather dictates terms but says the clubs are in the dark even about how many will be built so there's a business case to put amid doubts on whether the investment will recoup costs.
He echoes Flynn's sentiments that Central Football is competing with its affiliate clubs in winter through the FTC programme.
"We just want more transparency from the organisational body. I know they work overtime but they tend to be very secretive all the time," he says.
Ammundsen says Angell, as the creator of the FTC programme, is on a six-person panel which also includes two coaches from centre teams and just as many parents. One "club representative" is incorporated to cover the entire catchment area.
He says questions pertinent to any business module needs to be asked but "it sounds like they're looking after their mates".
"I think it's a question of process," he says, believing advertising for positions should be the norm.
It is understood the Peringa FC, Woodleigh FC and Eltham FC are among those who feel disenfranchised but, like clubs in the catchment area, are hesitant to speak out.
Russell Eades is the chairman of the Whanganui Football Charitable Trust. Photo / supplied
Whanganui Football Charitable Trust chairman Russell Eades says scrutiny of the account books show numbers don't add up on the franchise debt and Taranaki project.
"The amount due back from Hawke's Bay United doesn't really paint a very good picture in terms of financial equity," says Eades, adding there's little evidence of recouping of costs as the debt continues to escalate.
"Development of football should happen across the whole spectrum, not just in one area," says the 55-year-old retired chartered accountant, revealing the five-club trust was set up in 2007 to protect assets in the province after Central Football's fee hike of 40 per cent for its members.
Eades says the Taranaki project is ambitious in its "buy-to-sell" motives when juxtaposed with Central Football's ability to pay it off.
He questions the logic on buying land for $3.5 million and and sell it for a profit to be free from the shackles of debt as "very subtle".
"It's a non-profit organisation and it's often exempted from public outside its circle of membership.
"If you've been involved with chartered accountancy as long as I have [two decades] the word 'intent' comes up a lot of times as 'property'," says Eades, adding Central Football may get away with it but at a risk of a lot of money.
In a strictly accounting, auditing and reporting sense, figures that former CEO John McGifford quotes in his 2017 annual report, over time, "casts some doubt over it's 'collectibility'", and that isn't reflected.
Eades says Central Football's lack of transparency even boils down to the breakdown of what happens to player membership subscriptions.
