Slakewell-I can't concentrate with that avatar of yours looking at me.
But YES to all of the above. Why do we always end up with these sorts of people running the show?
At grass roots level it would be hard to find a better, hard working, like minded bunch of people, but at the top they just turn into block heads.
STAND ASIDE I say
Its Human nature , its already been said in another post that to get to the top you have to be the sort of person who will push others off to get there.
I think in everybody there is an element of greed and self serving that surfaces when the volenteer role becomes a paid role. I have always believed that in any sport having people with a passion for that sport running it at the top level is also a negative thing .
A buisness example is a bloke here ran one of the most succsessfull motorcycle shops in the country (selling mainly farm ATVs and accessories )
he had absoulutley no interest in Motorcycles outside of work to him they were just a saleable commodity and he was a good buisnessman . He didn't get bogged down with local club politics or sponsoring wannabees , he just sold bikes , atvs and gave great service to his punters .
Outside of work his interest were elsewhere so he was able to concentrate on his buisness witch was selling bikes and atvs his competitors critisized him for not getting involved in the sport but he ignored them and kept on selling more bikes than them
Over here in the last 10 yrs our governing body MNZ has gone from completly vollenteer (save 3 paid office staff ) to semi professional (and i use the term laughingly ) with a CEO and board . The old vollenteer system was flawed and drawn out but it worked and the organisation was self sufficent , since changing we have had 3 different CEOs (each one forking usless and with their own agendas )various shit fights and law suits , general dissention amoungst the members and a negative bank balance .
However what really put a bug up my arse was that individuals on the board (some mates of mine ) who are very very sucsessfull buisness people brought none of that buisness acumen to the MNZ table , it was like fork it this is just a game
there was no way they would have run their buisnesses the way they wanted to run MNZ .
They were very passionate motorcyclist and thats what they brought to the table , but we already have a sea of passionate vollenteers what we needed was buisness and marketing brains to run the show .
As it is MNZ is fast dissapeering up its own arse (not fast enough for me ) fortunatley VMX runs outside of MNZ so we do it our way.
Compared to MA MNZ is a very small fish but i think the problems are simillar .
