By MIKE DILLON
There's an old line in Auckland - if it's raining it must be Avondale races.
It's unfair, but the storm clouds continue to once again build around the country's most volatile racing club. Through the 1970s and `80s the AJC was New Zealand's most progressive club.
Look at just about any other decade and you find dissent and chaos.
The success of racing clubs comes down to people not horses.
If you don't believe that you haven't read the history of the AJC.
Ask anyone who dealt with the club in the 1960s, owners, trainers and journalists, and you won't find a kind word.
A few years later Dick McElroy became president, John Wild the secretary, and the club went through the roof with the Avondale Cup suddenly becoming just about the country's most difficult race to win. McElroy retired, Wild died in office in 1987 after 16 years, and a decline of Titanic proportions began.
The sad sight hit rock bottom when in 1990 the BNZ came within 24 hours of taking over the club.
Debts were $9 million and assets $8 million.
A couple of years after the crash, banks were in unforgiving mode.
The then Racing Authority, whose advice the AJC ignored to get into strife with unauthorised building projects, came to a reluctant rescue with literally hours to spare.
The package demanded a three-man independent management team of John Wells, Thayne Green and Dick McElroy.
The trio repaid almost the entire $8 million debt before handing the club back to the AJC committee in May 1998, a small debt to the Racing Authority's replacement, the Racing Industry Board, being all that remained. The management team had run the club at a profit for each of the eight years.
Last year the AJC showed a loss of around $90,000.
All of which is laborious, but necessary in a story.
The overall situation can't get worse. Right?
Wrong.
Stephen Penney, the Chief Executive Officer through the early and mid `90s, resigned and in more recent times returned as an elected committeeman.
The latest committee recently commissioned Penney to do an employment assessment on AJC managerial staff, including Murray Earl, who had replaced him. The result was Earl was recommended for redundancy and removed from office 10 days ago.
The ethics of such a move appal former bail-out committee member John Wells, who believes you would not encounter such business practices anywhere. Graham Chatfield, employed by the AJC as a part-time accountant, was also moved on and is suing the club for wrongful dismissal.
At a committee meeting when the Murray Earl redundancy was raised, president Ivan Sapich resigned in protest over the move. Jim Baddeley, vice president at the time of the stand-down, has become president.
Baddeley yesterday told the Herald he is there until the next annual meeting in October.
Herald inquiries yesterday revealed a members' petition with the legally required number of 24 signatures to require an extraordinary meeting within 14 days to put the presidency to the vote, was presented to Baddeley at the club's race meeting last Saturday week.
Baddeley told the Herald yesterday he did not action the petition because it was in the form of photocopies of the signatures and he did not have possession of the originals.
He said it was brought to his attention only last Friday that the originals were in the club's safe and that they had now been forwarded to the club's solicitor for legal advice.
Herald investigations yesterday suggest Baddeley had been advised of the whereabouts of the originals at the time the photocopies were presented.
AJC committeeman Graham Reddaway walked out of the meeting when Ivan Sapich relinquished the presidency in protest.
"I felt the matter should have been discussed in an open forum not in closed committee and that the subject matter was personality driven," Reddaway said.
"This whole thing is about a power struggle."
Reddaway said those loyal to Sapich had been behind the call for the extraordinary meeting.
"We have some leading administrators and business people prepared to stand for the club at the meeting.
"If we fail, so be it, but we're determined to straighten this thing out properly."
The Racing Industry Board this week advised the AJC that from this point it was not to discuss any of the club's financial matters in committee without one of its representatives being present.
RIB chairman Gary Chittick told the Herald: "They still owe us money and we'll be watching closely what they do to make sure the future of the club is not undermined."
As if all that was not enough for the financially troubled club, 29 Avondale trainers on Tuesday night signed a statement refusing to agree to a training by-laws contract for- warded by the club.
The trainers agreed some contract was necessary, but went along with the New Zealand Trainers' Association belief that the AJC contracts were too dictatorial.
It was beautifully fine at Avondale races yesterday.
But the rain is once again not far away.
Racing: Avondale management in disarray
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