George Peponis has ended an almost lifelong association with Canterbury after stepping down as a director of the leagues club.
Peponis – a former Bulldogs, Blues and Kangaroos captain – has been a long-time chairman of the leagues club. However, he landed on the wrong side of the numbers when he backed Ray Dib at the football club elections, only for a rebel ticket to sweep to power. The new football board then took a majority on the leagues club once some of the successful nominees transferred across as permitted under the constitution.
Peponis had been critical of the Lynne Anderson-led ticket before it was successful at the ballot box, but the pair subsequently smoothed over some of the bad blood that had emerged during a sometimes hostile campaign.
Long-time Canterbury powerbroker George Peponis.
The leagues club board now consists of chairman George Coorey, deputy Peter Callaghan, John Ballesty, Paul Dunn, Steve Mortimer, Peter Winchester, Morris Iemma and George Kanaan. Iemma and Kanaan joined the board as independents on an expanded nine-person committee in a move that briefly threatened the majority held by the bloc from the football club.
However, Peponis found himself in the minority and is understood to have stepped away to spend more time with his family. Peponis, a football club life member and hooker member of the Bulldogs’ ‘Ring of Champions’, remains the chairman of the NSWRL board.
The leagues club has funded the Bulldogs’ football department to the tune of about $5 million over the past five years and Peponis’ exit won’t alter that arrangement.
Canterbury’s bottom line will be in slightly better shape next year after the NRL decided to suspend $125,000 of the $250,000 fine handed to the club over its Mad Monday celebrations.
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