The Herb Greedy Hall in Marrickville echoed with hissing and howling.
Members of Marrickville FC – one of the largest community football clubs in Australia – had arrived in their hundreds for an annual general meeting in early December. It was an amazing turnout given only 15 people had attended the AGM 10 months earlier.
A faction of parents and coaches had become quietly, then vocally, concerned about the direction of the Red Devils, as the club is affectionately known. Together, they established Marrickville Community Voice, a group of members whom they hoped would be elected onto the club’s board.
The club had transformed from a community organisation into a commercial enterprise where money was the primary issue, one parent involved alleged later. A notable shift in the culture was evident in the inclusion of bonus performance payments for some junior coaches in 2026, claimed two parents.
But after the breakaway faction’s plans became known, supporters of the club’s president Bill Drossos and the management committee rallied, turning out in force to stop what they alleged was an attempt to “overthrow the board”. The meeting ran for 80 minutes and, at times, had the decorum of a boxing match.
It would rank among the more controversial days in the club’s 80-year history.
Seven parents, former coaches and members spoke to this masthead as part of this story. All except one did so on the condition of anonymity to protect relationships.
There were questions at the AGM about an alleged lack of transparency about the club’s finances, such as why the commercial terms of a five-a-side competition, run as a joint venture between Marrickville and a company owned by Drossos, appeared shrouded in secrecy?
Aside from the question of finances, the crux of the disagreement was a dispute over the soul of a community football club. Who should a sporting club be run for? And how much should winning be valued in children’s sport?
It is a microcosm of the modern era: one where more is understood about the cost of prioritising results in children’s football over enjoyment, but where high-performance football squads have proliferated as intensely involved parents, living vicariously through their kids, have pushed them to succeed.
Culture
Tom Engesser, the former technical director of Marrickville FC, personified one of the competing philosophies of coaching children’s sport.
“If something didn’t come off, I had heard him say, ‘Wow that was a really good idea; it may not have come off because your skills don’t match your thinking’,” says a mother who was involved in her son’s Red Devils side.
“It wasn’t about winning. He encouraged them to take risks.”
According to coaches and parents at Marrickville FC, the technical director took a high-level view on coaching.
In a game as chaotic and error-prone as children’s football, the obvious temptation is risk mitigation: playing direct and punting the ball long – hopefully to one or two strong, fast and gifted players who score all your goals.
Engesser’s approach was different – encouraging players to play more like Spain; passing and controlling possession which invariably causes mistakes. The cost can be short-term results. But the upshot is the development of players, who become infinitely better as they learn by making mistakes.
When coaches emphasise outcomes, the risk is young players become trapped in a mentality that success is a precondition of involvement. In contrast, Engesser wanted players to be better thinking footballers and enjoy the game for enjoyment’s sake.
He was constantly telling people the peak dropout period for boys in football was when they turned 14 – the age when they realised they wouldn’t make it professionally, the mother says.
“Some parents thought he wasn’t focused enough on winning,” she says. “But he wanted to keep as many kids in the game as possible.”
Then he was gone. A post on Marrickville FC’s Facebook account in June last year notified members that Engesser, who had recently finished coaching the club’s first grade side, had decided after 17 years at the club, he would step down “effective immediately”.
The announcement generated an outpouring of support for Engesser. “A huge loss for our club and all our players, get him back ASAP before another club grabs him,” read one post underneath the Facebook post.
Engesser declined to comment.
Not only did Engesser depart, but evidence of a new coaching philosophy emerged.
Obtained by this masthead, a contract for junior selective development coaches for the most recent winter season stipulates bonus payments would be triggered by various successes: $250 for finishing first, $250 for semi-final qualification, and $500 for a grand final win.
“Balance player improvement and development with an equal focus on team and match-based success culminating in semi-final qualifications and a grand final championship,” reads a key performance indicator in the contract.
Marrickville FC managing director Georgina Kokokiris told this masthead that Engesser had left of his own accord, saying the club offered to expand his role and his departure had “absolutely nothing to do with coaching philosophy”.
She said a “very small percentage” of the club’s teams were coached by paid accredited coaches, and those agreements were commercial in confidence. There were “many aspects in these agreements”, and the club had the “right balance of individual development and support of our juniors”, Kokokiris said.
Finances
On the blustery first evening of last December, Adam Smith entered the AGM with a list of seemingly straightforward questions he believed the club’s leadership should answer about its finances.
Smith – a club member and parent with no involvement in the Marrickville Community Voice – held two main concerns: the club’s qualified audit opinion, and the summer five-a-side competition, a commercial relationship between Marrickville FC and Sportzology, a sports uniform supplier owned by Drossos and his wife.
The 50-50 profit-sharing joint venture had grown rapidly since being established in 2018, to now include 250 teams. Drossos told the AGM that Sportzology had invested a “lot of money” to build and design the program, which included the naming rights, website and intellectual property. Moreover, the agreement was established before he joined the club and the contract had been renewed the previous year at “arm’s length”, he said.
Yet, when Smith asked if the terms of the contract would be made available, or even the dollar amount Sportzology earned be made public, Drossos demurred, saying: “It’s a commercial arrangement.”
In comments to this masthead, Smith said he was surprised his questions at the AGM about the accounts were taken as an attack on the club.
“It has grown from a volunteer-run community club into a $1.8 million operation, mostly from families’ registration, with paid staff,” he said. “The governance hasn’t kept up with the money.
“At that size, an arrangement with a company connected to the president should be set out in the accounts. There is no related party note in them at all.”
In comments to this masthead, Drossos said the club had thousands of members and only one had requested access to the information.
“Marrickville FC have many agreements with related party organisations including former and current management committee members and copies of these agreements and arrangements as you would expect are commercial in confidence,” he said.
Kokokiris denied the club had not disclosed details of the arrangement with Sportzology, which she said had been “independently approved” by the current board. Drossos had brought a “wealth of experience, large fundraising, and additional revenue streams” to the club, she said.
“This has allowed us to invest back into our club and its members including keeping our community registration fees as low as possible and not increasing those community registration fees for the past three years,” she said.
For the past six years, Drossos has been head of partnerships at the Macarthur FC, home to the Bulls, an A-League franchise based in south-western Sydney.
When it came time for questions, an already tense meeting turned ugly. Supporters of the existing management committee alleged the Marrickville Community Voice “breached privacy” by obtaining a list of parents’ emails to send them information about their plans without their consent.
As the meeting ticked over an hour, club legend Ron Royston was asked to deliver his verdict on the board’s performance. The 70-year club veteran, revelling in Marrickville FC’s 183 winter teams, proclaimed the already good club was only going to get better, but offered a warning.
To see so many people at the meeting was “brilliant”, he said. “But I’m just hoping you’ve been here for the right bloody reason, not to disrupt this club.”
Whether heeding Royston’s advice or not, the Marrickville Community Voice disbanded. Ten months later, Smith says he is still waiting for answers.