By RUSSELL BENNETT
WHAT footy off-season? After an astonishing turn of events in the Ellinbank and District Football League (EDFL), the Gazette can reveal that vice-president Pat Noonan will tender his resignation in disgust following the league’s ousting of secretary Mick Keane at its annual general meeting just two weeks ago.
Noonan said that before the AGM, neither he nor Keane had any idea that the secretary would be ousted.
He added there was “no communication” from league president Roger Gwynne and that he no longer trusted the executive.
“I will resign,” Noonan said.
“I can’t work with guys I can’t trust.”
Keane, a long-serving local football administrator and former president of both Nar Nar Goon and Pakenham football clubs, went down swinging, saying: “I was very disappointed in the decision and how the executive handled it”.
Gwynne has accused Keane of too often acting on his own accord without the executive, not communicating well enough with EDFL clubs, and of bias towards The Goon.
Gwynne said both Keane and Noonan, as well as The Goon, could feel free to leave and form their own league – adding “If they’re not happy, I don’t want them”.
All three men gave their side of the story to reporter RUSSELL BENNETT.
The league president
IN HIS 24 years involved with the EDFL, president Roger Gwynne says he has “never experienced anything” like the remarkable situation currently facing the league.
Gwynne has responded to comments made by the now ex-EDFL secretary Mick Keane in the Gazette last week that he was “very disappointed” in how the league handled replacing him in the secretary’s chair with 2012 treasurer Ian Cooper, and that the situation was “very poorly handled by those who pushed for change”.
Keane was shocked by the move, even saying “a number” on the league executive went into the AGM with “no knowledge of what was going on”. But Gwynne said the decision by the league executive was “virtually unanimous”.
The president cited “feedback” from delegates that “Mick’s communication skills weren’t flash”.
He disputed Keane’s claims that he hadn’t seen the move coming, saying: “I told Mick a month ago about Ian”.
Gwynne questioned Keane’s ability to be impartial when it came to Nar Nar Goon, a club Keane is a former president of and Noonan is still involved in.
“You can’t be ruthless but I was president of Nyora (at one stage) and you’ve got to distance yourself so you’re not favouring them,” Gwynne said.
“You have to be fair.”
Gwynne it wasn’t the executive that ousted Keane; it was the EDFL’s other clubs.
“Mick wasn’t with the league,” Gwynne said.
“He had all these ideas of his own and went against our process.”
He said Keane couldn’t accept that “nobody makes a decision unless it’s ratified by the 15 clubs” and that “if he wants to do things his own way, let him”.
He also stunningly threw a barb at The Goon, saying the side made too many waves too soon upon its initial entry to the EDFL.
“If they’re not happy with the league, they can piss off as far as I’m concerned!” he said.
“Let them go.”
The president said both Keane and Noonan had forgotten that the EDFL was run by a club delegate system.
“They want it run by a board of management,” he said.
“But we’ve had a very successful league with the clubs running it over the past 20 years.”
Gwynne described both the Goon and Keane as “too forward thinking”, saying they made waves before their time.
He even went on to question how Nar Nar Goon’s Spencer Street home ground came to host the 2012 interleague clash between the EDFL and the Central Highlands league.
“All of a sudden we had information that the Central Highlands and VCFL (Victorian Country Football League) had come to look at our grounds,” Gwynne said.
“Mick told me they’d picked The Goon.
“That’s bull****.
“How do I know that?”
Gwynne said the league was concerned about what it didn’t know when it came to Keane.
“His communication skills were very bad,” he said.
“In my time in the league we’ve never had a division, until this year – until Mick came on board.”
The out-going vice-president
Out-going EDFL junior vice-president Pat Noonan acknowledged Keane “wasn’t backward in coming forward” but praised him for “thinking about the future of the game”.
Like Keane, Noonan said he “100 per cent” supported the notion of the Ellinbank league becoming a two-tiered competition to lessen the divide between the top and bottom sides.
Noonan said before the AGM, neither he nor Keane had any idea that the secretary would be ousted.
He said there was no discussion about a move just two nights earlier at a meeting of the league executive.
“The last thing (Mick and I) both asked as we left that meeting was ‘Is there anyone else?’ ” he said.
“We were told there wasn’t.
“If I’d have known (there was), I wouldn’t have accepted my nomination as vice-president.”
Noonan said: “We were confident we’d get somewhere with Mick and that there was no need to gauge support”.
He added there was “no communication” from Gwynne and that he no longer trusted the executive.
“I will resign,” he said.
“I can’t work with guys I can’t trust.”
Noonan divulged that he was the one to encourage Keane to run for the secretary’s role 12 months ago.
“He’d been a club president at two clubs and had 20 years of administration experience,” he said.
“And he has balls – perhaps that’s his problem.”
Noonan said Keane was humiliated at the AGM, adding: “If it was decided (two nights earlier) that Mick wouldn’t run unopposed, he at least wouldn’t have sat there like a stunned mullet.
“I would have absolutely blown my top in Mick’s shoes but he handled it well,” he said, indicating neither man knew Keane didn’t have the executive’s support.
Noonan said Gwynne “couldn’t be more wrong” about Keane’s involvement with the Goon.
“We spoke about this before Mick took the job (as league secretary),” Noonan said.
“He had to be harder on us than anything – take the hard line and be absolutely correct so that nothing could come back on the club.”
Noonan said Keane was “pro-active in getting things changed”, saying “forward planning was the key”.
And he defended The Goon’s right to be a pro-active club, saying, “Roger always talks about how good the league is, how strong it is.
“Why? It’s because of the strong clubs like the Dusties, Neerim South, The Goon, Garfield, Cora Lynn and Bunyip. Those clubs bring the good talent in.”
Noonan said he still had a passion for community football administration, “but I won’t put in the time or effort to be treated like this”.
The ex-secretary
Keane said he accepted “100 per cent” that all 15 clubs had a vote and blamed Gwynne for the president’s own failed communication – even claiming the head of the EDFL didn’t have his own email address (a claim Gwynne later denied).
Keane maintained that he was blindsided by the move against him, saying: “If Ian (Cooper) wanted the job or more input, there could have been ways of utilising both of us”.
He went as far as to say Gwynne had hidden Cooper’s nomination from him, and made it clear he had lost respect for the president.
Keane said he no longer had anything to do with The Goon, and said Gwynne was searching for excuses to attack the club.
The former league secretary said it was a VCFL-backed Central Highlands decision to play 2012 interleague football at Spencer Street, not his, and that – at odds with the club’s executive – he had come down hard on The Goon twice this season.
Keane said his highlights of his year as EDFL secretary were the strong crowds and the atmosphere throughout the finals series, and “getting the clubs to start thinking about where they’re headed as a group”, adding: “I pushed my thoughts across to get them thinking, but I can’t make decisions for them”.
