PFA Annual General Meeting: Members, President and Chair re-affirm support for FFA Board Candidates Reid and Foster

Professional Footballers Australia’s (the PFA) membership re-affirmed its support for FFA Board Nominees Craig Foster and Heather Reid at the PFA’s Annual General Meeting on Wednesday. 

PFA President Alex Wilkinson, who was re-elected for a further three-year term, praised the organisation’s transparent approach and the nominees’ motivation to share a clear and collegiate vision for the Australian game.

“The players are incredibly proud to have transparently and proactively shared and endorsed its nominees – and published a considered policy framework against which it will assess the candidates.

“We’re also proud to have supported two candidates who are deeply entrenched in and defined by football. In Craig, whose nomination for Chair we continue to support, and Heather we have candidates whose actions over decades speak volumes for their commitment to the sport.

“This transparent approach has resonated with the football community. Regardless of whether or not Heather is elected to the Board or Craig elected to position of Chair, their reform mission continues. This is something as players we can be truly be proud of and a vision we can unite behind.”

PFA Chair, Brendan Schwab, who was elevated to PFA Champion at the PFA AGM, said:

“The players resolved unanimously that a sophisticated understanding of football and footballers is a skill that is fundamental to the incoming board.

“The players and the broader football community have patiently and resolutely invested the last three years building a platform for a football-centric reform.

“A failure to embrace such reform is a waste of a once in a generation opportunity to ensure we anchor football at the heart of the sport’s governance and dismisses the exceptional work undertaken recently by the Congress Review Working Group.”

In exercising its decision-making in the Board Election process and in the interest of transparency, the PFA released a Policy Framework for the Election of FFA Directors,demonstrating both to its membership and the game’s broader constituents the framework through which it will assess candidates and allocate its voting.