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Top Aussie Jobs For Scott & Anderson

Apr 9, 2013  - Craig Lord

Mark Anderson has been appointed Swimming Australia Chief Executive Officer, with former performance head of Britain Michael Scott confirmed as Director of High Performance in his own country.

In a statement from Swimming Australia President Barclay Nettlefold, the federation noted: "Currently the CEO of Hockey Australia and a former Chief Commercial Officer at the Essendon Football Club, Anderson will bring strong governance and commercial experience to the role, as well as a clear understanding of Australia’s high performance systems.

"The National Performance Director at British Swimming since 2007, Scott is a former Director of the AIS and NSWIS and was the CEO of the organising committee for the 2007 FINA World Swimming Championships, held in Melbourne."

Nettlefold said: “Firstly I’d like to thank interim CEO Jeremy Turner for his outstanding work in the role over the last six months, particularly around the initial implementation of many of the recommendations for improvement within the organisation. We’ve gone through an exhaustive process to find the right people to lead our sport and we know Mark and Michael have the skills and acumen to take the organisation forward.

“Mark has had some outstanding success with hockey over the last four years, at both a governance and high performance level, and his commercial experience in both elite and professional sport will be of huge benefit to Swimming Australia.

"In our new Director of High Performance Michael Scott, we have a career sports administrator with more than a decade of high performance swimming experience and knowledge. These appointments are just another positive step in setting up the best leadership structure to enable athletes and coaches to perform at their best."

The appointments come a couple of weeks out from Australian trials for the World Championships. Anderson, will start after trials end, on May 6, while Scott's start date is yet to be confirmed.

Anderson said: “Swimming has such a proud history of success and high levels of participation in Australia. I am greatly looking forward to the opportunities and challenges of leading the sport towards Glasgow, Rio and beyond. In working through this process I have been impressed with the amount of work that has already been undertaken and energy levels from all involved to bring about improvement at all levels of the sport. I’m looking forward to leading this change process collaboratively with all of our key internal stakeholders such as the Board, Executive team and staff, athletes, coaches, officials, our State Members and our valuable external partners.

“It is an exciting opportunity as we all work together to establish Australian swimming as a respected world leader across every area of our sport,” he added.

For Scott, who resigned from his position at British Swimming in November last year when the bosses at the federation there wanted to change a contract they offered for signing before London 2012, the chance to return to a key swimming role in his home country "was too good to refuse", Nettlefold noted. Britain wanted its director to be based in Britain, while Scott spent a lot of his time in Australia.

“I have a great passion for swimming and know that Australia has the athletes, coaches, facilities and drive to be a huge success in the pool,” said Scott. “We’ve always been a proud swimming nation, and we have a legacy of high performance to uphold in the sport.  I’m sure everyone is aware of the challenge ahead, and I’m just looking forward to assisting the athletes and coaches wherever I can to meet that challenge.”