IT’S ALMOST GROUNDHOG DAY – that time of the year when the Board of the Brisbane Racing Club wakes to their worst nightmare.
The anger that Wally Gleeson feels about the way his son Simon was treated before and after his controversial departure as a BRC Director remains as resilient as ever.
The Annual General Meeting of the BRC will be held on Wednesday October 14 at 10am at Eagle Farm, when existing directors Richard Morrison (Chairman), his deputy Terry Svenson and Jennifer Creaton are running for re-election. They are being opposed by Michael Rapkins (a retired businessman and long-time BRC Member) and former Qantas manager, Cheryl Ah Chee.
Gleeson, a long-time Member, seen as a ‘regenegade’ by the BRC Board, has used recent AGM’s to vent his anger about the departure of his son Simon and against the way the Club is being run and how it operated when Neville Bell was chairman. This year will be no different.
But his tactics have changed this time round and Wally is reportedly doing his best to ensure the new Board of Racing Queensland, especially Sydney-based Chairman Matt McGrath, attends the AGM of the biggest race club under their jurisdiction.
Gleeson recently sent this message to Board members Graham Quirk, Kym Daly and Gary Cunningham, which LGHR has managed to secure a copy of. It reads:
GENTLEMEN, can I suggest that in your role as RQ Board Directors that you attend the up-coming AGM of the BRC – and bring with you Chairman McGrath.
You will get the full expereience of Transparency, Integrity and Accountability of RQ’s racing show piece, the BRC and its directors.
The attendance would gain you the respect of the racing fraternity at large. Sitting around a Board table without first hand knowledge of the industry administration is somewhat remiss of you all.
This particularly when the charter of the long ago Review was conducted on the pillars of TRANSPARENCY, INTEGRITY, ACCOUNTABILITY.
I, along with others, thank you for considering this invitation on behalf of racing people in Queensland.
WALLY GLEESON
EDITOR’S NOTE: Whether Richard Morrison and his Board have done a good job or not is immaterial to LGHR but we endorse the invitation to Board Members and especially the Chairman to come out from under his Sydney rock and make his presence felt at the most important AGM of any club in the State.
It’s time for McGrath to stop campaigning on behalf of his ‘Boy Friday’ Lachlan Murray for the role of CEO, not to send him along to the AGM on his behalf but explain to the industry his boast to a Breeders Association meeting that in the space of four months he had converted a $20 million loss into an $8 million profit at RQ.
With all due respect, if the head-hunters for the position of CEO give the job to Murray when there are high profile candidates with far more experience and ability, then it is an absolute ‘joke’ and the buck will stop with Racing Minister Tim Mander.
Surely there’s another highly-paid position that Murray could fill. We don’t want to see him out of a job after the hard work he has done as the Interim CEO. But the top job can only be seen as his by someone like McGrath who many stakeholders believe is looking for a ‘main man’ that he can control more than an appointee who would have more knowledge of the industry in Queensland in their little toe than ‘big Mac’ could hope to possess in his entire body.
