It’s an incredible privilege to be the next President of the North Melbourne Football Club. I’ve been North for as long as I can remember – home games at Arden St, away games at every ground around the VFL, standing on tiptoe in the outer, and always ready to jump the fence on the final siren, trying to beat the players and every other kid to the race. 

And although so much of our club has changed since I was a kid, the core ingredients are the same: we’re intensely competitive, we have the most passionate and loyal supporters, and we know we don’t have to be the biggest to be the best.

I was lucky to join many of you in 2007 to fight to ‘Keep North South’. In 2011 I joined the club as General Manager of The Huddle, spending five years developing the club’s community footprint, only to return to the club in an official capacity by joining the board in 2019.

We've come a long way since 2007. The route to debt free took more than a decade – and was accompanied by rebuilding facilities, properly resourcing our football department, adding our women’s program, developing The Huddle, as well as growing membership and so much more. And none of these things has been done as a bolt-on – every single piece has been well thought out and considered and added with care and an eye to the future.

Many people have contributed to this success along the way, particularly James Brayshaw, CEOs Eugene Arocca, Carl Dilena and Ben Amarfio, and their respective boards and administrations.

But I want to pay particular tribute to Ben Buckley, who has been on the Board for nine years and President for six. Ben’s drive, ambition, and love for North know no equal, and he has been an outstanding leader of our club. I have been especially grateful for his counsel, and know that we will all continue to benefit from his support and advice, even after he steps down from the Board.

With Ben’s departure, and following the retirement of Brady Scanlon at the end of last year, the Board has added two new directors, Rodney Piltz and Andrew Harris. They, of course, join existing directors Paul Dwyer, Dr Harry Unglik, Suzana Ristevski, and Anthony Stevens on the club’s Board.

Rodney, a partner at Ernst and Young, has been a member of the club’s Audit and Finance Committee and is a member of the Match Committee coterie group. Andrew, also a Match Committee member, has worked on our Integrity Committee and has served as the club’s external lawyer for well over a decade. Both Rodney and Andrew will stand for election by members at our AGM later this year.

So, as we prepare for the start of the 2022 AFL season, and for the AFLW finals (it’s unbelievably exciting to be playing a final at Arden St this weekend!), I’d like to take a minute to summarise our priorities.

First, on-field success. It’s going to take us a few years to get there, but we are not interested in making up the numbers. We are interested in sustained success. And we will give both our men’s and women’s football teams everything they need to take us to our fifth men’s and first women’s flag.

Second, off-field security. Paying off debt is an incredible achievement and means we can now invest in our future rather than paying off our past. But we still have no non-football assets on the balance sheet. We need to build an asset base, and we need to build cash reserves that enable us to weather future storms, or to make decisions that are best for our club, and not forced on us by financial necessity.

Third, Arden St. Our facility is tremendous – but we don’t own it, or the land that we are on. We’ll be working to rectify that, and to ensure that we have a solid future base in the Arden Precinct, which will be a game changer for our club.

Fourth, our club culture. We are a club that reflects, as we always have, the suburb we are in – diverse, inclusive, vibrant and relentlessly optimistic. Whether you think of yourself as North, or a Kangaroo, or a Shinboner, these are the characteristics that define us. They were key to our early decision to move away from pokies revenue and they underpin the work we do through The Huddle.

And last – but by no means least – our members. It’s critically important that we listen to and engage with our members. You are our single most important asset. You saved our club in 2007, you paid off our debt and re-built our facilities, you joined in record numbers last year when we finished bottom, and you support our women’s and men’s teams, no matter what.  The simple fact is, we won’t achieve anything – on-field success, off-field security, and a long-term Arden Precinct base – without you.

Although it’s true that we need to grow our membership base, we also need to fully engage the members we have. We need you at games and on our website and social channels. We need to hear from you when things could be improved – or when they go well – and we need you to stick with us as we grow, on-field and off.

I hope to see as many as possible of you at Arden St on Saturday to cheer on our women’s team, and at the MCG on Sunday as our men take on the Hawks. I cannot wait.

Go Roos!

Sonja