Vote
Both the Hawthorn and Melbourne Football Clubs called extraordinary general meetings – Hawthorn held their meeting at the Camberwell Civic Centre, while Melbourne held its meeting at Dallas Brooks Hall. To the surprise of the respective clubs' boards, the meeting halls were filled, with more members and supporters of each team watching proceedings on large monitors outside. Entrepreneurial peddlers set up stalls selling merchandise along the long queues into the respective meeting halls.
The debates about the merger were passionate, with Scott (in a now famous moment) at one point holding up a mock-up of the Melbourne Hawks jumper, and proceeding to rip off a Velcro hawk and yellow V-neck to reveal a Melbourne jumper underneath. Prior to the commencement of the meetings, vocal anti-merger supporters chanted team songs and anti-merger slogans.
While Melbourne members (aided by a large bloc of proxy votes and the inability of all interested parties to get inside the hall to vote) voted 4,679 to 4,229 in favour of the merger, Hawthorn members overwhelming voted against it by a vote of 5241 to 2841 and the proposal was defeated. Large-scale resignations followed on both boards as those who had supported the merger fell on their swords; several prominent members of the anti-merger campaigns (including Dicker, Scott, Brereton, and Gutnick) would take senior executive or board positions at both clubs in the wake of the merger. The two sides continue to play in their original form to this day.
Read more about this topic: Melbourne Hawks
Famous quotes containing the word vote:
“... even if the right to vote brought to women no better work, no better pay, no better conditions in any way, she should have it for her own self-respect and to compel man’s respect for her.”
—Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906)
“Thanks to our good old Constitution, and organization under it.... [The country] only needs that every right thinking man, shall go to the polls, and without fear or prejudice, vote as he thinks.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
“The Republican Party does not perceive how many his failure will make to vote more correctly than they would have them. They have counted the votes of Pennsylvania & Co., but they have not correctly counted Captain Brown’s vote. He has taken the wind out of their sails,—the little wind they had,—and they may as well lie to and repair.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)