{"id":320137,"date":"2025-12-01T07:46:11","date_gmt":"2025-12-01T07:46:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/320137\/"},"modified":"2025-12-01T07:46:11","modified_gmt":"2025-12-01T07:46:11","slug":"wests-tigers-chairman-barry-ofarrell-sacked-amid-board-purge-and-a-wrong-colour-jersey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/320137\/","title":{"rendered":"Wests Tigers chairman Barry O\u2019Farrell sacked amid board purge \u2013 and a wrong colour jersey"},"content":{"rendered":"

Former NSW premier Barry O\u2019Farrell has been sacked as chairman of Wests Tigers in a purge of the board by the NRL club\u2019s owners.<\/p>\n

The joint venture has been plagued by dysfunction at boardroom level since the merger between Balmain and Wests in 1999, and the latest round of firings plunges it into more turmoil.<\/p>\n

\"Barry<\/p>\n

Barry O\u2019Farrell with Charlie Viola and Michelle McDowell, who were appointed as independent directors in January.Credit: Steven Siewert<\/p>\n

The Holman Barnes Group, Wests Tigers\u2019 majority owner, confirmed on Monday a removal notice had been issued to the club\u2019s four independent directors: O\u2019Farrell, Annabelle Williams, Charlie Viola and Michelle McDowell.<\/p>\n

They were only appointed to the board at the start<\/a> of the year as part of sweeping recommendations arising from an independent review.<\/p>\n

However, HBG chief executive Daniel Paton said the new structure had not been effective and was marked by poor communication between the owners and the Tigers\u2019 board.<\/p>\n

HBG, which runs the sprawling Wests Ashfield League Club, said it had been left out of the loop on some commercial announcements despite maintaining two directors on the Wests Tigers board, including chairman Dennis Burgess.<\/p>\n

According to sources with knowledge of the situation, speaking on the condition of anonymity, one issue that led the HBG board to take action was the colour scheme of next season\u2019s Tigers home jersey, which was deemed to be too orange \u2013 a traditional colour of Balmain.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile it [the appointment of independent directors] has worked in some areas, it hasn\u2019t worked in others,\u201d Paton said. \u201cAnd the Holman Barnes board has been left in the dark on some commercially sensitive announcements.<\/p>\n

\u201cFurther to this, the Holman Barnes board doesn\u2019t believe the communication between the boards has been satisfactory.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former NSW premier Barry O\u2019Farrell has been sacked as chairman of Wests Tigers in a purge of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":320138,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,761,762,158,85],"class_list":["post-320137","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nrl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-national-rugby-league","tag-nationalrugbyleague","tag-nrl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320137","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=320137"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320137\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/320138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=320137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=320137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=320137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}