Hodyl, Hardiman re-elected to Board for three years

President Peter Hodyl and Director Des Hardiman have been re-elected to the Board of the Swan Districts Football Club on new three-year terms.

The 2023 Board Election recently took place with two positions on the Board of the Swan Districts Football Club up for re-election.

Initially three nominations were received for the two vacant positions, but in the end one of the candidates withdrew their nomination. 

As a result, the only two remaining candidates for the two Director positions were Peter Hodyl and Des Hardiman leaving them to retain their positions on the club's Board for 2024 and beyond.

Hodyl and Hardiman returning to the Board will see them join incumbent Directors Andy Holmes, Roanna Edwards, Ian Westmore, Brendan Valentine, Ken Wyatt and the club's chief executive Jeff Dennis.

The nominations for election to the board closed on Friday August 11. While the three nominations for the two positions were initially received, it was only Hodyl and Hardiman remaining meaning they were elected unopposed. 

The election ballot was overseen by honorary returning officer Bob Hutchinson and Membership and Events Coordinator Mitchell Eastman with Hodyl and Hardiman elected unopposed for the next three years.

Hutchinson would like to thank Maurice Embley, John Rowe, Norm Kirkup and Mitchell Eastman for their support and on-going commitment with the Board's election process.

Hardiman is a Fellow of the Institute of Public Accountants, a Member of the Governance Institute of Australia and a Justice of the Peace. He recently retired following a 30-year career in the education industry being the bursar/business manager for a number of independent schools. 

Prior to that, he worked in accounting positions for a number of businesses, including five years as the accountant for Swan Districts between 1981 and 1985. 

Hardiman has had a strong community and sporting involvement over many years including positions on numerous boards and committees. He has been a past President and member of the Swansmen Committee since 2013, and a member of the Past Players & Officials Association since 1985.

Hodyl was first elected to the Swan Districts Football Club Board in 2012 and appointed President in 2014, a role he has remained in ever since.

He is a 1990 Premiership player and former captain of Swan Districts during his 80-game playing career with his role as President going alongside his work as a station officer with the Department of Fire and Emergency Services. 

In the bigger picture, Hodyl is pleased with the direction the club has been heading on and off the field in recent years, and in a football perspective, feels both the WAFL and WAFLW programs are on the right track for sustained success.

"Especially over the last five or six years, we've built ourselves into a position as a club where we can invest in our football program," Hodyl said.

"We've also heavily invested into our social impact program which also creates more opportunity to invest into our football as well. With our WAFLW program, we've got a really young side and that's been quite a deliberate move and we fully understand the challenges surrounding that. 

"We're trying to move into a high performance structure and culture with our women's program, and we're trying to guide it into being more of a high performance outfit and that's going to take time. 

"WAFLW will take a bit of time in general to catch up to where we want it to eventually get to, but we think it's on track and we're really happy with how our WAFLW team is going. Our colts can just depend on the age group coming through and we've got a lot of low age players this year but we expect to be up there a lot more next year. 

"Our goal is for all our grades, in both WAFL and WAFLW, to be top three year on year, and by having that as our strategy, we try to reverse engineer that to work out the best way for us to be able to challenge for premierships. 

"That's what we're endeavouring to do, we're investing into our football program to give us the best chance with our strength and conditioning, sports science and all sorts of things”. Chris