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Former Hawthorn coach and triple premiership player Peter Schwab has formally nominated ex-Australian Super boss Ian Silk to the Hawthorn board as the Hawks face a contested election featuring six candidates.
The Jeff Kennett board’s chosen candidates – current director Tim Shearer and former player Simon Taylor – are vying for two board spots and face a contest with Silk, 1991 premiership player and ex-board member Andy Gowers, Mulgrave Primary School principal Charles Spicer and lawyer Jennifer Holdstock.
Former Australian Super boss Ian Silk and Hawks president Jeff Kennett.Credit:The Age
Sources familiar with the board situation said Silk and Gowers have already been in discussions with Kennett’s board this week about their candidacies. That pair is being backed by reform group “Hawks for Change”, who have mobilised an online campaign to curtail Kennett’s grip on the board by changing its composition.
Kennett has been conciliatory in his comments about both Silk, whom he called “highly qualified”, and also Gowers, the latter having been backed by a number of ex-players including five-time premiership star and former captain Gary Ayres, who nominated him for the board position.
Silk was proposed for the position by Schwab and seconded by 1971 premiership player Bruce Stevenson, who served on the board from 2012 to 2017.
Spokeswoman for Hawks for Change, Lyn Sutton, welcomed the opportunity for members to have “a clear say in the future direction of the club, and the decision by four individual candidates to contest this election”.
Sutton said almost 1000 members had signed up to their campaign over the last week.
Shearer is the board member responsible for fundraising for the club’s new Dingley headquarters, the Kennedy Community Centre, while Taylor has been endorsed by the board as an incoming director to replace departing member Radek Sali, the wealthy former chief executive of vitamin company Swisse.
Under Hawthorn’s constitution, Kennett is directly elected by the members, not by a vote of the majority of the board, in what is an added twist to the board battle and a complication for the campaign to cut short his presidency.