PORT ADELAIDE Chairman David Koch has encouraged critical discussion between supporters who attended the club’s unique Member Convention on Saturday at the Adelaide Entertainment Centre.
Hundreds of members were in attendance for the club’s second exclusive inner-sanctum experience, which is the only event of its kind across the competition.
With member-exclusive attendance and no phones, recording devices or notepads permitted into the facility, it was truly an inner-sanctum experience for the Port Adelaide faithful.
Koch said the club was happy to be open and transparent with its members.
“Again, we will open our doors and provide a level of access to information that no other club offers,” the Chairman said in his opening address.
“You may not always like what you hear - we accept that. That’s part of being a totally inclusive football club.
“As many of you did last year, you will no doubt measure us on what we will say we will do in 2019 and hold us accountable. That’s fine. We get it. That’s why we are doing this. We want to take you on a journey and we expect to be measured across that journey.”
Koch said the club would not pick and choose the content it shared with members or manage external media cautiously to ensure only its own messages were conveyed.
But he asked members to remember the closeness of the AFL competition when judging the club’s performance.
“Remember we are playing in one of the most competitive sporting competitions in the world,” Koch said.
“The AFL has engineered the competition so that each team wins a flag every 18 years. It’s bloody hard and every weekend we have an opponent who is doing their utmost to counter our plans.
“However, we are a club with great expectations and we will never shy away from that.
“Port Adelaide is a club that exists to win premierships and to buck the AFL’s equalisation model of club’s winning a flag every 18 years.”
The event featured talks about all facets of the club from List Manager Jason Cripps discussing the club’s recruitment planning and senior assistant coach Michael Voss outlining how the club will handle the new rule changes in the AFL to each of the line coaches discussing their strategies for their respective areas.
The High-Performance staff, led by Dr Ian McKeown provided a pre-season update and General Manager – Football, Chris Davies discussed the changing landscape of Australian Football.
There was a panel discussion about player welfare and an insight into the club’s Next Generation Academy set-ups while a panel featuring experienced campaigners Hamish Hartlett, Tom Jonas and Ollie Wines along with new faces Ryan Burton and Connor Rozee outlined the pre-season preparation from the players’ perspective.
Koch’s remarks called for members to realise how important they were to the club, in everything it does.
“We care a lot about our responsibility to you our Members, the responsibility to our rich history and the responsibility to create a legacy for the future,” he said.
“We are nothing without each other – our community and our Members is what drives us, it’s what gives us purpose, it’s what gives us a cause to be successful.
“Today will give you some real insights. I encourage you to discuss with other Members some of the key learnings from today so as there is a greater understanding of the journey we are on together.
“Remember, we are all custodians of this club and with that comes enormous responsibility.
“Our commitment to you is that every decision we make we believe is in the best of interests of our club’s number one objective - that is winning.
“Winning for this club has been our number goal since 1870 - that hasn’t changed and it never will.”
