Questions: ORFU and the Centre of Excellence for Amateur Sport

Comment received.

Russell Garbutt
Submitted on 2012/06/04 at 7:25 pm

Time for some more connections to be made by Hamish McNeilly [Otago Daily Times] as to the goings on of the ORFU.

For a starter, it would be really advantageous to look closely at a strange little outfit called the Centre of Excellence for Amateur Sport. Now wound up after a bit of attention was paid to it, some interesting questions Mr McNeilly could ask of say, John Spicer and Ron Palenski for starters and then they could always go to Kereyn Smith who was a fellow Director, could include – just why was this little company employing people solely working for the ORFU? Did they apply for pokie funds from TTCF? What were those funds used for? Just why did Martin Legge point out that the Centre of Excellence was nothing other than a front for the ORFU? Why was TTCF told to just hide any applications from the Centre of Excellence? Whose name was on those applications? Did this person making these applications for the Centre actually work for the ORFU at the time? Has this person refused to discuss these matters with anyone? Is he now working for the City?

Some other questions that the erstwhile Mr McNeilly could ask Maarten Quivooy of DIA could include – is he confident that the staff of DIA conducted a professional and rigorous examination of the Centre of Excellence, the ORFU and TTCF in, and from 2008? Does Mr Quivooy concur with his staff’s comments that the whole setup with these three entities “was quite smelly”? Does Mr Quivooy also concur with his staff’s comments that the ORFU and the Centre of Excellence got away with diddling the public?

Finally, would Mr McNeilly care to write a further article on just how the whole deal actually worked including naming those people at the centre of this rort? Would the ODT be game enough to publish?

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Stories by Hamish McNeilly
ODT 2.6.12
● Internal affairs to investigate ORFU, pokies
● MP’s query sees ‘all hell’ break loose
● Determined to clean up gambling industry

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Posted by Elizabeth Kerr