Well in a big morning of a big announcement, and it's been coming for a long long time. It's nearly a decade. I've just discussion and the soil was turned this morning by none than the Adelaide Football Club chairman, mister John Olson. Welcome John, Congratulations, Jimmy, good.
To be with you. Thank you. Very important day it was.
It was and was it exciting mate? I saw all the shovels lined up.
Did you get your hands there?
Yes, we did, putting a dust around today. A journey of three eight hundred and twelve days to get here. So it's been a long complicated journey, dealing with a whole raft of different stakeholders. But we're there and we're now on the custard delivering this project for our membership and.
Fans relief or pride. John absolutely relieved.
It's a really important milestone. ROWI but recognizing.
There's still a lot of work to do.
So I use the analogy today it's you've done all the hard work to get to the vinyls and then you've got to start all over again. Because it's now we've got into the building phase. We've got to focus on delivery as best we can on time on budget. Although we've got a fixed price contract which gives a degree of financial security to the club going forward, we didn't want to enter into any arrangement that was in any way put at risk the financial sustainability of the club.
How much have the delays cost?
Remember interviewing you March last year and you said, for every month there is a delay, ats a million dollars?
Have you had you tali that cost?
It'd be in the if you from day one.
If I go back five years ago.
Was when the first had the first discussion with Maya Coxon of the City of West Torrance, and that at that time we were anticipating about eighty five million dollars. Well it might have been eighty five to ninety and if it's now an one hundred million dollar project, so we'd be talking escalation over that five year period at
the order of perhaps up to ten million dollars. And so that's meant that we've had to secure some additional funding further two point seven million from the Commonwealth Government and increase our target for sponsorship and donations from supporters of the club.
What will your debt be.
Deb will be approximately fifteen million at the end of the day. It depends if the have fundraising continues on the trajectory going at the moment, it could well be less than that.
How do people, if they want to and they could hear this, contribute to the club. I think you're probably talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars, not wondllar coins and two dolar coins. How and where do they go to get that info?
They can get that from the club. There's dedicated team looking after that. Anything that's contributed its tax deductible. A number of people are looking at a five year contribution, an annual contribution over five years and that is tax deductible because it's through the Australian Institute of Sport. We've got tax deductibility for the donations that are made of both people and it's the full scale rowe hundreds of
thousands down to quite small amounts. We'd be grateful for whatever comes our way and we'll be ramping our outreach to our members, supporters, our fans to increase that as we get into the build. The important thing was to demonstrate we're past talking, we're now doing and delivering this.
Who on your board has development experience or do you have consultants that will overlook this and report to the board.
John, We've got a number of consultants, one from Interstate, one from here. We also have Adrian Espland, who was the CEO of Sarah Constructions and he's been with our facility committee helping us, supporting us for a couple of years and he'll now chair the project delivery committee. So he's a CEO of a well reputable, high profile and important South Australia construction company and he'll be overseeing all the reports to the board.
Okay.
Will the Crow sample team play home games home games there?
That's what we would hope to be the case. We've got to have the agreement expire that we entered into when we did the shift to Adelaide Oval, But upon the expires that agreement and perhaps before what we want to do is our w team will play their home games there and as sample team also to play home games there.
Okay.
That then puts us on an.
Even footing with the other clubs in the sample competition.
We're directing, John, and I know we love getting you on because you do field questions, UNI comestyle food text.
There's a number of them coming through.
Is there a part or an area there that's licensed where I can have a beer or wine?
Yes, there is.
There will be a cafe in the facility and also a member's lounge, so you'll be able to come as a fan or a supporter or a member, and you'll be able to watch either indoor or outdoor seating the squad training at seb Oval, so you'll be able to see it firsthand and have a soda, water or a drink in the cafe or the lounge.
Fantastic John.
The actual oval itself. Will they end up doing Adelaide oval dimensions or will they go somewhere similar to McGlade.
Well, to me at the moment they're digging up the oval, the old Sevenden oval. Yes, it'll be rion orientated on the same axis and size as Adelaide Oval. It'll be an absolute snapshot of Adelaide Oval. That'll be Sebbi Oval. And then on King's Reserve will have a training field,
second oval training smaller oval training field. And when the tunnels are finished, then a Marvel Stars stayed and will able to be put there because the land towards the tunnels when construction's finished, will become available, gotcha.
So it'll be it'll be almost two parts that second oval.
Yes, yes, we'll.
Stay and second yeah, gotcha? Correct, Yeah, I should have come down this morning able to have to tear me on, made me debut on TBDA.
Did you made me debut there?
Now?
Did you have a few old West terms? Boys?
There is that right?
Yes?
At Johnny Graham Lindsay was there. There's a whole the whole group of people and it was really great to see them down there. And we've said the history and the heritage of football on that oval will be maintained a heritage gates, the Heritage Grandstand will have them on a board and recognize the samful footy greats that played at SEBDA Noval. And interestingly, this week, I think it is eight years ago the w team played their first game, first game of.
A number of people asking this one, will our membership go up?
No, not related to this at all. In fact, we made a decision to avoid that and we'll be going down several phases phases of raising. We're in the one hundred thousand dollars category, moving down to the twenty five to fifty thousand dollars category all tax deductible, and then moving from that again, we're proposing to do our fundraising
tax deductible fundraising. That's an offset we didn't propose and do not have not proposed in our financial modeling to apply any membership increase to the facility as it relates directly to the facility.
Well, that answers that to a number of people in the unique homestyle through text. Our club's AGM will be her held. I think it's early March, the march any board announcements, not the member elect and that'll take its course, but any other board announcements that you anticipate before.
Then, I would hope we'd be in a position to announce. We have several vacancies.
On the board at the moment. We've got a.
Football first focus and we have been in discussions and addressing that issue. I'd hope once we go through all the checks and balances and governments, governance arrangements, etc. Prior to the seventh of March, we'll be in a position to announce the composition of the board.
Okay, is Neil barm in that shuffle.
We've had discussions with Neil Well, we've had discussions with Neil over several years, and perhaps unfortunately over those several years they haven't come to fruition. However, we are in discussions with the Neil again, but we'll see where that ends up, and there'll be an appropriate time if we get to have everything finalized, to make an announcement, and I'm hopeful that that will be before.
The A in March.
That's what we're striving for.
Okay, and your footy director is Mark Raschudo.
Will he go on or he's part of the change that you're meeting in early March.
Well, well, we put in several years ago we changed the constitution to put in place term limits for directors and the maximum number of years you can serve on the board is twelve years. Mark has served eleven. He has under the constitution the right to continue to a twelfth year, but could not continue beyond that as a result of the constitutional changes we put in place.
John, I've got a unique home style food text from a Adelaide support of Patrick. He's just asked, could you ask about the member satisfaction survey? Apparently Port Adelaide we're fourth. Where did the Crows finish? He wants to know.
I'm sorry to be off the top of my head, I can't tell you that. We do focus on those. They're reported to the board on a regular basis, and we track our social media very closely. We look at our outreach in our social media, and we are in our communications and social media activities with the membership base and the broader supporter community is up there in the top three or four. There's no doubt about that. I can't tell you about the satisfaction rating.
I could have a guess at it, but I'm not going to get that.
That's fair enough. You get a few more brownie points with this announcement, don't worry, which is great. Now. You know you're mentioning about the fundraising side of it. Have you put a subcommittee together for that to try and drive getting those funds in to try and reduce that immediate debt.
Yes, we have, and it's got about three components. So Rob Chapman's involved in that, Stephen Roach involved with that. We have a number and there's about three different streams of fundraising and different categories, different dollar amounts, and so we've got people who are supporting us in that endeavor. At the moment In fact, there's a meeting taking place at Adelaide Oval right as we speak, so I'm not in that meeting because I'm talking to you guys.
Good on you so that you raise it.
John Olson, our guest chairman, big day today for my club. Are you bullish on the twenty twenty five season ahead?
Like me, John, I'm always optimistic.
Rowie and I look at last year and we were caught out with depth of our squad. When you have Isaac renk And out suspension concussion for an extended period, Riley injured there was injured at the start of the season, doesn't participate for almost what sixty percent of the season or thereabouts.
And you take key players out like that and.
You can't substitute for them, you pay a penalty. This competition is so even little things matter. And bringing Cummins peeping and Neil Bullen in three Players Finals experience plugged into the competition, addressed addressed the depth of our squad where people are as the number of them have said
publicly we're fighting for our position. That is a good thing for the club and the determination we've backed the footy department in brought in Murray Davis to relieve some of the work of Nixy so he can be the best he can possibly be. So with all of that, focus on round one, Rowie and perform on round one and take it from there.
Yeah.
I like that. So you're not using the worth if word like we did this time last year.
Well, during my political career, I always understood it was very hard if you put a peg in the sand, because you're always going to be held right to that. And there are so many variables in these injuries, things that come to pass, but some are in your control
and some aren't. And you don't know what the seventeen other teams are doing at the moment, where they have improved, how they performing in the pre season, trial games, etc. So a really big focus this year, supplemented the depth of the squad, supplemented the footy department looking at football first strategy with Bard appointments, all about delivering finals, exposure, experience and participation.
That's what we exist.
For, exactly right to you and your team, well done over three eight hundred days. As you said, Look, we've got a home, we've got a future, we've got something that I think all members can look forward to. And I know when it's done, we'll be certainly proud. John, well done, put the feed up, thank you, put the slippers on smok us Agar for about two hours, and then you've got to build.
The bloody thing.
So the real starts now starts in terms of delivering the product itself.
So thanks guys.
Good to be with you, just talking to John through the years and the Tim Silvers and the club and other people that were on the board, certainly the samfle the moving parts on this deal was phenomenal, the different stakeholders, if you think of it, two councils, the action groups, the government departments, the development, the Samful, licenses, mayor's egos, to exactly right, exactly right that which is bubbling in
the underneath, to land. This has been superb and to everyone there would have been people that would have thought, oh, I mean I think I even said I said to John Olson one day, you're not throwing good money after bad. It gets to a point where, God, when you stop, they're there, they've landed, the shovels are out. This is exciting and I feel it as a Crows fan. You want to know you've got something in the plans, in the wing I want to know that it's done, it's real.
Like I think talking to John through that journey, that there couldn't be any other option but Ebden. They had to get had to get in, they had to get dirty, and they had to make it happen, and they did exactly that event.
So full crew.
John's a better man than me because I would have spat it and he hanged tough and he was the right man in that right job to get.
This job done. So willed under him