In December 2018 the club’s elections were adjourned to February 2019 after voting slips were sent to ineligible voters. Bob’s spiel to the members before the election was that he wanted to return Perth to their former glory and that he wanted to be transparent with supporters.
PFC Involvement- Current
PFC New Premises development committee-member. “The late President Vince Pendal would be pleased to see his dream of the new PFC Headquarters one step closer with the announcement of the $4 million Federal Government support – and the current President has carried that dream forward.In my experience to develop this complex and create a sustainable Community Hub with new, non-football revenue streams will require PFC to strongly upgrade it’s administration and add serious resources. I offer my expertise to make these changes happen.
CAPTAINS GROUP STUDY TASKFORCE – acted as Chair & Spokesman for this group of former PFC Captains, Patrons & Club Solicitor – who have been mandated by the PFC Board in 2018 to survey the WAFL Football Industry and the PFC Corporate Governance and Operations – with a Reporting date in March 2019.
POSITION STATEMENT
“Perth Football Club is better than this.”After more than twenty years of very ordinary Football performances by PFC, despite some happy highlights, I have the full support of the above CAPTAINS GROUP, Past Players, PFC Members, Club sponsors and others to use the above experience to help lift PFC back to its rightful position among the strongest of the WAFL Clubs. I ask for your support to achieve this. In February 2019 Bob was appointed as President of the Perth Football Club and had this to say.Dear Members, Supporters, Partners and Sponsors,My name is Bob Shields, and I am pleased to inform you that I have been elected to serve as President of the Perth Football Club. I would like to thank you for your support and I look forward to all of us working together to make PFC once again a powerful WAFL Club, as we have been for most of our Club’s 120-year history.
My role as new President will be to rebuild the Club's business model as a leaner, fitter 21st-Century Football Club. Simply put, our off-field operations and the PFC's standing will lift over the next two-to-five years, which will lead to quality players wanting to join us, strengthening our playing roster.My other job will be to identify a quality person about thirty years younger than me as the next PFC President.
In Bob’s four seasons as President, we have finished sixth, fourth, ninth and look likely for a ninth placed finished this year. We have won 20 games and lost 39 games over those four seasons. On more than one occasion I have heard Bob say that in no way will we merge with West Coast Eagles. Yet last year he said in an article written by Mark Duffield he labelled such speculation that Perth could partner West Coast in an alignment model in 2022 as “at this stage premature”.
We heard from the club and Bob a lot in 2020, especially when we fell into the finals. Optimism was high heading into the 2021 season with lots of posts in the lead up to round one. The year fizzled out and communication started to wane. This year unless you have been attending the clubs pre-game luncheons you would have only seen two videos on the clubs facebook from Bob. One back in April and another last week. Members grew more and more disgruntled by the lack of communication in the second half of last year to the point some where even considering about whether or not to renew their memberships. This year hasn't improved in fact its probably got worse. Then I hear recently that the club want the members to do more. How much more do you want the members to do? We've been turning up for the last 45 years with little to no success. Eventually that takes a toll on an individual. You can't keep asking the members to hand over their hard earned dollars for a membership, merchandise, refreshments or attend club events if you aren't going to keep them updated with the goings on at the club. Granted there are things that we don't need to know but the communication just isn't there.
You also can't just keep fobbing members off and expecting them to re-sign with the club when you constantly only win between 1-6 games each season.
