Seventy-Two Days

The onboarding framework had a number embedded in it from the beginning.

Ninety days.

Thirty days to listen and learn.

Sixty days to build momentum.

Ninety days to lead, deliver and set the agenda.

At the 90-day mark, the framework contemplated a formal confidence discussion involving the Chair and Board.

I never reached it.

On 19 August 2026, approximately seventy-two days after I started, I was given a letter headed "Termination of Employment - Unsuccessful Completion of Probation."

The letter raised concerns about leadership, conduct, interactions with the Board, following instructions and communication.

My employment was over.

There was a surreal quality to the speed of it.

Only weeks earlier I had been building a new accounting environment, working through staffing structures including hiring three new staff, meeting venue partners, planning competition reform and analysing commercial arrangements.

Now the Association was moving on without me.

The Board offered access to counselling sessions and $1,000 towards relocation expenses.

The practical generosity of that did not change the basic reality.

I had moved across Australia for a two-year appointment.

It had lasted seventy-two days.

The question I kept returning to was not whether the Board possessed a contractual right to terminate during probation.

Probation exists for a reason.

The question was whether the process and explanation fairly reflected what had actually been happening inside the Association during those seventy-two days.

Had the issues I raised been treated as evidence of diligence or disruption?

Had staff concerns been tested?

Had I been given clear feedback and a meaningful chance to address it?

Had the Board's own 30, 60 and 90-day onboarding structure been used as intended?

Had the organisation wanted change until change became uncomfortable?

Those questions were now bigger than my employment.

They went to how Boards recruit, support and govern executives in community sport.