Bennett has plan for Lara
FORMER Lara player Shane Bennett has thrown his hat into the ring for the vacant chairman’s role at Lara Football Club as long-serving boss Gerard Evans announced he will stand down.
Bennett, a former member of the Lara Sporting Club, has signalled his intent to nominate for the top job at the AGM on October 16.
That’s when Evans, chairman of the club for the past four years, will tender his resignation.
Evans won’t nominate for the board, choosing to step down effective immediately from the club that failed to win a game this season.
Associated with the Cats since 1992, Bennett is eager to drive the football section forward after months of uncertainty, which came to a head in August when the club held a crisis meeting to determine whether it would it remain in the GFL or self-relegate to the Bellarine Football League.
“I feel I can add value to the Lara Football Club,” Bennett said. “From a football perspective, Gerard’s administrative skills are first class and he’s got a terrific team that has worked very hard.
“But it’s Gerard’s fourth year as chairman and that’s a long time to be at the helm of a team that’s won four games in four years.
“The club needs new sets of ideas and I’m hoping the majority of the current committee – in fact all of them – stay on so we can build on the knowledge and experience in the team because if everyone leaves we lose IP and the foundation work they have done.
“We are in a rebuild and if we don’t use that foundation OTHER GRAND FINALS DIVISION ONE COLTS Torquay 1 v St Mary’s 1 , 9.15am we’re back to square one.
“We’re not at square one, we’re at square two or three, and we want to move forward.”
Bennett backed the move to remain in the GFL, despite a strong push from Evans and other members of the board to begin the rebuild in a lower tier.
“Absolutely, 100 per cent, the GFL,” Bennett said. “That’s where the football club needs to be, and in particular, the growing community. We will kick, scratch and fight to remain at the top level. Lara is an incredibly proud club.
“We’ve lost a nucleus of senior players for whatever reason – and I don’t know those reasons – and we have a huge opportunity to develop a list into the good senior players that they can become.
“We’ve got a bunch of kids and what we need to do is continue to develop them and introduce some bigger bodies to help them become senior players.”
Bennett will bring a wealth of business experience to the club and has a wide range of contacts. He also plans to engage with members of the community to further develop the club’s brand.
“The Lara community is full of untapped resources,” Bennett said. “There are business and sporting associations through the whole area and we need to tap into them to make the club stronger.
“Gerard has been working GFL RESERVES St Mary’s v St Joseph’s, 11.30am *All games at Simonds Stadium his backside off, and so has the committee, but new eyes see things in a different way.
“We need to get that footballer’s passion back. The results don’t reflect the passion and enthusiasm this community has for the football club.
“We’re getting smashed mercilessly, yet the community continues to support the club.”
Evans said he informed the playing group of his decision to stand down on Thursday night.
“I mulled over it for a while,” Evans said last night.
“I’ve added up the years that I’ve been involved in Lara footy as a junior coach, junior administrator or a senior role and I’ve been involved in the club for 15 years and we’ve been through a lot of change both through junior and senior football and my work at the moment is really quite demanding and my family life is really busy, so it came the time where there was a little bit of exhaustion and I hit the wall.
“It’s taken a while to come to the decision, and it’s not easy because I think we’re on the right journey, but it has been made with the best interests of the club at heart.”
Evans said he was tempted to take the club through the next phase of the rebuild, but felt the Cats would be better served with a fresh start.
“If you look at the last four years, it’s been a difficult four years to stabilise the club off the field,” Evans said.
“We’ve more than doubled the amount of sponsorship we had, we’ve created major community and fundraising events and this is the first time in more than a decade that we will finish financially positive and that’s come at a fairly large toll.
“Now we need to get more activity for the on-field role now and that will take just as much effort again.”