New Bullants president says club will go back to being called Preston

New Northern Bullants president, Melbourne barrister Neil Howard, confirmed tonight that the VFL club would revert to its original name next year.

He said the move was aimed at reclaiming the identity and history of the struggling club.

“We’re going back to the community,’’ Howard, 60, said.

“We’re going to embrace the community and find strength again within the community.

“I think we have lost our identity … I look at the name Northern Bullants and it doesn’t strike at my heart and the grand finals won and lost, the blood that’s been spilt, the volunteers who have given away their time, it really doesn’t strike at their hearts either. Preston does.’’

Howard, the son of former Bullants captain Claude Howard, took over as president after a meeting of club officials and the AFL last Thursday.

He said he believed the Northern Bullants would have fallen over unless a new board came in and tackled their “poor’’ financial position.

The club, formed in 1882 and a mainstay of the old VFA, changed its name to the Preston Knights in the 1990s and has since been known as the Northern Blues and Northern Bullants.

The Ants declared they would be unable to go on after Carlton withdrew from their VFL alignment in 2020, but they reformed as an independent when the league resumed from Covid in 2021.

They’ve since struggled on and off the ground, winning only two matches in 2023 and the same number last season.

This year it has also had trouble at board level.

Howard said the club needed “solidarity and continuity instead of change, change, change’’.

“There’s a tremendous amount of work to do,’’ he said.

He said he had been hanging around the Bullants “like a parasite’’ for the past two or three years and recently joined the board as vice-president.

He met AFL officials last Thursday.

“I sat with pursed lips and then after 20 minutes biting through those lips I blurted out, ‘After this meeting, I’ll be taking over’,’’ he said.

“They were the exact words I used. Geoff Walsh (AFL football department) said, ‘Who are you, are you a member of the board?’ I said I was, I said it had been discussed and the time was right.’’

Marcela Fuenzalida has been appointed marketing and membership director and Aggie Vlahos as head of sponsorship.

The club has called a special meeting for June 16 to fill board positions.

Howard said the players and coaches would be paid this week after “generous benefactors’’ came forward in the past few days.

“You can’t get accountability from your players – that is, to ingratiate themselves and their families into functions – if we’re not enticing them back to the beehive. If we’re not giving them honey in the first place, they’re not going to respond in kind,’’ he said.

“Some things have been right in front of us and just ignored and it’s been to our detriment.’’

Howard said the Bullants needed to establish stronger relationships with the local council, the Northern Knights and the Darebin VFLW club.

He said the club would also focus on improving facilities at the Cramer St ground, starting with the lighting, and would go back to playing home games on Sundays.

A fundraising campaign similar to Richmond’s “Save Our Skins’’ will be launched in September.

It will tentatively be called “Don’t Stomp on the Bullant’’.

Preston last won a premiership in 1984, under the coaching of former Collingwood captain Ray Shaw.