http://www.warriorsbasketball.org/BVNotetoAllWarriorFamiliesandMemberssep20.pdf

Note to All Oakleigh Warrior Families and Members
From: Stephen Walter - Basketball Victoria
Sep 20, 2016

Business as Usual for Warriors

For an interim period, Basketball Victoria will be managing the affairs of the Warriors Basketball Association until a suitable strategy is prepared to rectify several governance matters that have stalled the Warriors progress for the upcoming season.

The plans for Warriors moving forward are no different to any other season. Warriors will be preparing holiday camps, summer registrations for the domestic season and preparing yet another group of talented basketballers for VJBL and BIGV basketball competitions.

For the time being, Basketball Victoria staff members Stephen Walter and Fiona Tarrant will be the key contact points along with current Warriors Administrator Terri Kahan.

With thanks
Stephen Walter
Basketball Victoria Manager

Posted on Facebook by Bob Mann today:

Dear Warriors Members,

Last night a group of passionate Warriors members gathered to go over recent events in regards to what we can do to avoid our great club going out of business. This meeting was brought about due to revelations this week about our finances and due to the email sent to members via Stephen Walter. We will be arranging another event this Sunday, especially for the girl's teams and for those who could not make last night to discuss this further. Keep any eye on your in-box today.

The major drama threatening our club’s future is now a financial one more than a governance one with the club carrying significant financial liabilities accrued since 2013.

We provided those in attendance with a number of options for them to support or reject. These included options to combine in with other local Associations for both domestic and rep competitions. The main option though that was discussed long and hard was saving the Oakleigh Association and allowing our kids to continue to play for the club they have represented so well over the past five years and they have come to love as their own.

I am glad to say the vast majority (only two opposed) supported a concerted effort to save our club from the mess we find it in. to do this we very quickly need to do the following:

Step One - Lobby Basketball Victoria through the following contacts: -
TODAY (preferably before 2:00pm) we need to get as many people to lobby the Basketball Victoria contacts I have listed below. In that email simply be passionate about what the club means to you and your children, a bit of history of your involvement and why you believe it should be given the opportunity to continue and how you believe we can come together to overcome the financial and governance issues facing us.

Once you have sent your email in get other to send in theirs as well. We need lots of emails to make this effective. Doesn’t matter whether they are with the Warriors or not, anybody who thinks this is wrong needs to get involved. I have listed Stephen Walter’s phone number along with his e-mail, as he has encouraged members to get in contact, so do so, but be respectful while being passionate at the same time.

Stephen Walter - Basketball Victoria appointed Manager for the club
E-mail [email protected]
Mobile: 0400 966 829

Nick Honey - Basketball Victoria CEO via his executive assistant Merry Sholer
E-mail [email protected],au
Note: Ensure you mark this one for Nick Honey’s Attention

Mike Bainbridge – Basketball Victoria President
E-mail [email protected]

Step Two – Do you have auditing/accounting experience: -
We have had one and possibly two members with experience in these areas, who have volunteered to go through our financials to get an absolute and clear picture of where our club is financially. At the moment other than knowing that we face a significant debt, nobody seems to know exactly what that debt is. If you have similar auditing/accounting experience in this area, please contact me via my details below to help out.

Step Three – Developing a plan to trade our way out of our debt: -
Much of our debt is to the ATO. I have been advised now by several people that we can arrange a strict payment plan over a period of time to repay that debt that should allow the club breathing space and time to address all area of concerns and to allow us to trade in a solvent manner going forwards.

I need people with a business/finance background to assist us to come up with a plan to ensure that going forward
We trade in a solvent manner,
That we can put in a plan to eliminate debt and
We can put in place processes that the club can grow at a significant rate to ensure it is an ongoing viable concern into the future.
If you have experience in this, again we would love to hear from you via my contacts below.

Step Four – An executive for the future: -
We have had six wonderful people nominate for an interim executive who have worked their butts off behind the scenes over the past eight weeks. They nominated for those positions as under our constitution you need to have been an approved voting member who has served a 12 month probationary period. All these people meet that criteria and put their hands to do what they could to rescue the club

We now need to arrange for new people with fresh ideas and energy to nominate for the next executive of the club. There will be an SGM called at some stage once we have dealt with our financials to elect a new committee. At that SGM a new constitution will be adopted to allow all paid up members to nominate for an executive position. So now any parent of any child can nominate and be voted onto our executive as can any member 18 and above.

If you want to help firstly save and then rebuild our club to a position of strength, please get in contact with once more via my details below.

Step Five – Fundraising: -
We are going to bring together a group to put together a number of fund-raising events and initiatives. If you would like to help out with this group, yif ou have any fund-raising ideas or things you can provide for ways to raise funds again get in touch. Already last night, one of our members has kindly offered to donate a prize for a raffle or event to raise funds for the club. That’s the spirit we need.
If you are like that please get in touch.

In an email earlier this week I used the below saying from master motivator Anthony Robbins. Read it carefully. How appropriate is this to our club right now?

"No matter how long a wall has stood, none has the power to withstand the continued force of human beings who have decided to persist until it has fallen"

We can sit back and allow others who are not a part of our club, who don’t know the people within it or the passion they have for the Warriors to decide our club’s destiny or we can make our club’s future direction our choice!

To start that effort go to step one and get busy lobbying and get other into the effort. We need good people NOW!

We will keep you updated with further steps in coming days.

Go Warriors!

Kind Regards

Bob Mann
0468 543 173
[email protected]

If Basketball Victoria have taken over, I'm assuming a new Board can't be voted in unless BV agree?

BV statement appears to support status quo - i.e. VBJL and BigV will continue.

Pretty much spot up.

That's why Bob has requested people to email BV contacts.

I empathise with them, hope they can get everything in order and back on track soon.

Clearly need some strong leadership!

I'd reckon it may be more useful to identify a solution to the financial situation prior to lobbying BV. BV will certainly agree with parents simply saying that it's a great club and should be supported, however without a solution to the financial problem there's no way that BV could hand control back to a new board...

LC I don`t think made it was made public yet, but was advised by someone there that they have been told it is all over now and players being told to tryout elsewhere.

BV were running it and that post was made ont he 20th of Sept, things have been found to be even worse since then.

Owing in excess of 100k to the ATO doesn`t help.

The latest email on their FB page:

​​​​​​​
Dear Warriors Members,

Hi all, once more.
Unfortunately due to current circumstances I need to keep our email/information campaign up. Hopefully by the end of this week, this can ease as we get a clearer picture of what we need to do to keep our proud Warriors club alive, well and on a pathway to rebuilding our teams, our programs, our membership and our club.

This is very achievable and can be done in a quicker time frame than everybody thinks. Please read below for developments and action points that we are currently implementing and will be implementing in the very near furture.

Our club IS NOT dead, it is very much alive!
As much as it seems it at the moment, our club is not dead. In fact we are very much alive. As a part of the agreement between BV and McKinnon, McKinnon will be providing a free season for Warrior domestic players and teams so our registrations can be used to pay off that debt.

This will significantly reduce our club's debt burden and if our liabilities are not as great as thought we can become a viable solvent entity that can once more begin trading again in basketball services much quicker than we think

Audit
Two wonderful members with accounting/auditing background have volunteered to complete a forensic audit of the clubs book to discover our exact financial position. This will be of enormous benefit as a first step in rebuilding the Warriors. We are looking to get started this week and hope to have it finished in a matter of weeks.

Keep lobbying Basketball Victoria
There have been many heartfelt and passionate emails sent into Basketball Victoria yesterday about our club and it’s right to decide its own destiny. Thank you so much to those who have written in. Just because we received yesterday’s email from Stephen Walter doesn’t mean we stop lobbying. Warrior members need to keep sending in emails and need to keep encouraging others to do so.

Port Phillip Warriors
We have a back-up plan that we will be running in parallel to the above lobbying effort. The Port Phillip rep program has kindly offered to take in as many of our teams as possible as they are. This in effect means that we will be running two clubs within the one rep program. Our teams will stay as they are as long as enough players from those teams register.

They will play and train as Warriors teams, play in Warriors uniforms, use GESAC as their home court, be coached by current Warriors coaches and for all intents be Warriors teams with Port Phillip in front of their names instead of Oakleigh. Rep teams will also inherit previous Warriors teams in rankings for grading.

Media Exposure & Investment Angels
I am endeavouring to get us exposure through media outlets at 9 news, the herald sun, local leader newspapers and 3AW. I am also approaching some potential investment angels to help the club. If you have strong networking skills in these areas see what you can do to help out the club.

Fund-raising
We will be looking to implement several fund-raising initiatives. These will include
A sportsman’s night embedding a Bob Mann "roast". This will be hugely entertaining, lots of fun and has the potential to raise plenty of funds. I am looking forward to having critics coming at me from the front rather than from behind!
We will be conducting a second shoot-a-thon for those who didn’t participate in the first. This can raise substantial funds if run correctly.
We will also be looking to conduct a major raffle with some substantial prizes.
Finally we will be launching a “Gofundme” initiative that can raise substantial funds through social media. This will be launched early next week and can be promoted to your friends via social media and email. Get right behind it when we get started.

These are all great fund-raising initiatives but will need great people to help run and administer them. Contact me if you are prepared to get involved.

Vision and business plan for the future
I will be publishing via social media and our website a vision and a pathway for the future for the Warriors. Through this we will develop a business plan that will deliver our club to an elite level within VJBL ranks in a few short years. This plan will be ambitious, exciting and very achievable. Updates start this week, I will keep you posted.

Our club is not dead or about to be folded. That only happens if we allow it to happen. After the last 48 hours I know there are plenty of people with the passion to not only stop that from happening, but to bring our club back to a stronger and more exciting position than ever before.

Get to tryouts tomorrow and help us delivery that vision over the next two years.

See you tomorrow. Go Warriors.

Kind Regards

Bob Mann
0468 543 173
[email protected]

Question would be....

Why is it that all these suggestions or initiatives are being put in place now?

How does an organsisations get itself in such a poor state to begin with?

Did the club try to gte to big to fast with juniors, seniors etc in such a short space of time.

Wher did all the money go that was coming in?

All very good questions.

If it's purely a big ATO bill then it seems the previous management was just incompetent, even though their focus on basketball was probably done with all the best intentions.

Like most blogs on here most of the above is pure speculation and opinion as we don't know the specifics as we're not involved in the day to day running of the Association or on the committee.

However, if what has been indicated is true or even half true it is sad for basketball.

It's not pure speculation. If their major debt is to the ATO, that's evidence of very poor financial management. It's irresponsible, and can only end one way.

Must be a pretty big debt that was accumulated. It's stated above that that is their major one..

Bob Mann off to Keysborough to coach their Youth Men team next season

Well it looks like he has abandoned ship in the first life boat, leaving others to steer the sunk ship.

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/leader/inner-south/oakleigh-basketball-association-slammed-by-messy-offcourt-chaos/news-story/5e556fc1430a1dbbaa4f4e27ccc34a23

Well that is why Keysie moved from Springers Leisure Centre to Rowville because they were operating at a loss

Don't you read the articles? They moved so they can train and play at the same venue. Plus I'd rather play at Rowville then Springers have you seen that place?

Lets be honest Oakleigh grew at rapid pace and with decent teams in junior and senior, going to Keysie is a step backwards for Bob Mann. Rowville today then what some primary school in Springvale for the Keysborough club. Standards of clubs competing has gone long time ago, as long as you have a team you compete, forget about structure, sustainability, growth, financial status, its all gone when Keysborough were allowed in. Even Westgate are bigger after about 2 years.

Train in Doveton and Hampton Park - Play in Rowville. Are they sure they still wanna be called Keysborough?

Have they got a legit domestic comp up and running yet? How do they get affiliation and approval to be in VJBL and BIG V without that?

VJBL site shows they have zero junior girls sides, yet they are trying to sustain a D2 womens team. How does that even work?

Agree, just shows it is not elite, they have no home, no domestic, hardly any junior rep teams with no women teams, no money but still hey lets put them in and make numbers. What happened to Matt Cowling days when you had to pass a interview and stadium and financial check for your sustainability for years to come. I reckon Dandenong have better financial domestic clubs who could enter VJBL & BIG V as well.

Facts are facts mate, regardless of how it is spelt, you have a club that is no better than a domestic club (and a small domestic club at that).