Former Eels chairman Roy Spagnolo is backing a bid to unwind reforms introduced after years of bitter factionalism at Parramatta in what the club’s board says would be a backward step towards its dark old days.
Members of Parramatta Leagues Club, which owns the NRL team, will vote this month on a proposal to dump postal and electronic voting for elections and to relax director eligibility rules under which Spagnolo can’t run for a seat on the board.
The property developer appears on a list of names endorsing the changes, along with a range of his relatives and associates.
They include three other members of the Spagnolo family, brother-in-law Domenic Sergi, friend Vince Lombardo and neighbour Ross Mittiga, as well as fellow former Parramatta director Mario Libertini and ex-club executives Bob Bentley and Tony Cinque. Among the other petitioners are former Soccer Australia president Tony Labbozzetta and Anthony Ange, the son of porn king Con Ange and a candidate for election to the Parramatta board.
Club president Mark Jenkins, a former NSW Police assistant commissioner, wrote to members that the board viewed the proposals as an attempt to “dismantle reforms that made our club strong”, vowing Parramatta “will not return to the dysfunction that harmed our club”.
Spagnolo, who headed the board between 2009 and 2013, believes they would improve governance and transparency at the western Sydney gaming, hospitality and entertainment juggernaut, which has tens of thousands of members.
Remote voting for club elections and staggered terms for directors were brought in after Parramatta hit rock bottom with a salary cap rort that led the state government to intervene and place an administrator in charge.
Those moves were intended to counter the ability of election tickets to gain control of the club by mobilising a fraction of the membership base to attend its annual general meeting.
It was under the regime of multiple Eels premiership winner Steve Sharp, not Spagnolo’s, that Parramatta was found cheating the cap, resulting in a $1 million fine and a deduction of 12 competition points in 2016.
But during a tumultuous era in the years leading up to the scandal in which there were three regimes within four years, there had been constant in-fighting at Parramatta.
“It really takes us backwards, in particular the notion that people have to turn up to a club during certain times to physically vote,” Jenkins said.
“What we’ve done is bring availability to vote for all 65,000 of our members.”
Spagnolo said electronic and postal voting had made little difference to low overall engagement.
At the board election in 2024, at which he finished third, missing out on the two available positions, there were 2749 votes lodged.
“In 2009, when I ran and there were people that were interested, 2000 or more members turned up because they wanted change. I just think if you’re interested, you turn up,” Spagnolo said.
“The federal government and state governments don’t have electronic voting.”
Spagnolo is unable to contest another board election himself after Parramatta members last year approved a constitutional amendment disqualifying individuals from serving as directors if they had been deemed as not fit and proper by a relevant authority.
The petitioners are also pushing to remove that barrier, which would clear the way for the former chairman to put his hand up again in future.
Spagnolo in 2015 was found to be “not a fit and proper person to be a member of the governing body of a registered club” by the Independent Liquor and Gaming Authority, which determined he had not adhered to proper processes in claiming expenses for parties at his house and that he had authorised a bonus to then chief executive Bentley based on poker machine revenue.
ILGA at the time also considered a more serious allegation that membership details of Spagnolo’s friends and associates had been backdated to render them eligible to vote but it said that while the tampering claims warranted further investigation, they were not proven by the material before it.
The authority did not impose disciplinary action against Spagnolo, who was no longer a director by then, and it concluded there was no reason to cast doubt on his honesty.
He said they were technical breaches and he had “only done good for the club”.
The Spagnolo-aligned group also wants Parramatta Leagues Club to establish an independent disciplinary panel to deal with issues of alleged misconduct. Such matters are handled by the boards of registered clubs.
The proposals are being put to members ahead of the Parramatta Leagues Club AGM on February 24.
The Eels have been governed by a separate appointment-only board since 2017, distancing NRL team matters from Parramatta Leagues Club, although it nominates two of the seven football club directors.
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