A volley for Tennis NZ

BY DAVID LONG

EXCLUSIVE: Tennis New Zealand is heading into deeper crisis with the prospect of a vote of no confidence in the board looming.

Sunday News understands a number of clubs and regions are so sick of the way the sport it being run that they're using Tennis NZ's proposal for a dramatic increase in membership affiliation fees as a way to vent their anger.

Tennis NZ are trying to push through an increase in fees from the current figure of $16 + GST to $20 this year and $25 for 2011, while junior fees would go from $4 to $13 over the same period.

It would mean the amount of money Tennis NZ gets from affiliation fees will increase from $533,047 for the year ending April 2009, to around $750,000 for this year and over $1 million next year.

But in a dramatic move, the country's two biggest regions, Auckland and Canterbury have already voted to reject Tennis NZ's proposal.

Central  which includes the Wellington region  plan to go back to Tennis NZ to clarify a few points, Southern and Waikato Bays are yet to consult their clubs, while Northern are contemplating whether there's still the need to hold a special general meeting as Auckland and Canterbury have already rejection of it.

Sunday News has been told by a number of sources that a rebellion to the board is imminent and the negativity towards the affiliation fees increase is the first step on the road to a vote of no confidence.

"There are a number of people who want to get together to hold a meeting soon and from that they'll look to take a vote of no confidence to the board," one prominent figure in the New Zealand tennis community said.

Another source said influential people involved in the sport had enough of this country's inability to develop young players, that the transformation of the country from 25 local associations to six regions had been a failure and that communication from Tennis NZ was abysmal.

"It's starting to develop now and you'll see some action in the next month or so," the source said.

"Nothing has been put in place yet, but the regions are discussing it amongst themselves.

"Everyone wants to lie low until it happens in the next month or so.

"There's no doubts that most regions want massive changes within Tennis NZ."

Tennis NZ chairman David Patterson said he was unaware of any plot to unseat the board and warned that if there was no increase in affiliation fees it would have serious ramifications on the development of talented youngsters, including the opportunity to fund a coach to travel around the world with our promising players.

"We need to explore avenues to raise further revenues," Patterson said. "To both continue the initiatives we've got underway, but also to expand the amount of support that we've got for transitioning our junior players to professionals.

"We think some of those funds should come from people in the game, so we've been exploring an affiliation increase.
"Another exercise we're looking at is to find a group of 50 people, one of whom will be me, who'll each put in $10,000 a year for a three-year period.

"We're going to talk to Auckland and Canterbury further, we've still got time to regroup and convince people that we should do that, because the consequences of not having an affiliation fee increase will be that we'll have to revisit a couple of our programmes and the amount of investment that goes into them, one of those would be the regional performances centres."

While there are concerns over Steve Walker's leadership of Tennis NZ as CEO, it appears the board are the ones most in the firing line as it pushed through the so-called 'Revitalisation Programme' which saw the associations pooled together as six regions.

"People are unhappy about the whole direction of what was supposed to be the restructure and its lack of delivery," the source said.

"It was bulldozed through by a few people at Tennis NZ. Most of the country didn't like the idea in the first place and this is them saying they told you it wouldn't work."

A president of one of Auckland's clubs said members have become disillusioned with the way the sport is being governed.

"Auckland's big problem with it is the accountability of it all, these guys getting big salaries and what are they actually doing for it?" he said.

"Where's the payback for it? Where's our world ranked players and what are they doing to help the clubs?

"Auckland Tennis could run without Tennis NZ, so why are our members subjected to this levy? What are we getting for this money? The answer to that is nothing."

But Patterson backed the Revitalisation Programme, saying it had helped get everyone in New Zealand tennis on the same page.

"The revitalisation process has made a huge difference to the situation that existed before, which was a group of associations which operated independently."

Sunday News has also been told that current and potential sponsors are holding back in putting money into the sport because of concerns over how the sport is being run and the bad publicity it continues to get.

Also, some of the regions are concerned that the bad publicity towards Tennis NZ has meant they're being tarred with the same brush, making it harder for them to secure sponsorship deals.

With the tennis community being so tight knit, few are keen to speak openly about their concerns, but one who isn't afraid to do that is tennis great Onny Parun, who was runner up at the Australian Open and spearheaded New Zealand's Davis Cup team for 15 years.

"People are getting sick and tired at what's happening at the helm of New Zealand Tennis," Parun said.

"I've been voicing my opinions, which haven't been popular with New Zealand Tennis officialdom, but do people think I should be happy that New Zealand tennis hasn't had a man at a Grand Slam in the singles for nine years?

"Should I be silent about our Davis Cup standard?

"I feel I've got a responsibility to the game because myself, Brian Fairlie, then later Chris Lewis and Russell Simpson had successful Davis Cup ties in New Zealand and abroad and we built up a lot of money for the associations, so I feel responsible that the money we built up is being frittered away needlessly all the time.

"Now they want to increase the levies and we'll see if people stand for that one.

"If we were winning the Davis Cup I'm sure you could increase it three-fold and no one would mind, but things are getting worse by the day."

- © Fairfax NZ News