This is not the kind of thing where you don't dignify it with an answer, either David Gallop is lying, or this story has legs.
Given everything that has been said in the media about the club recently, this is exactly the sort of thing that you don't answer at night on a Friday without meeting with internal stakeholders and formulating a proper response to. I'd expect a proper press release from the club during the day tomorrow.
But you had the meeting. So why, given recent events, didn't you have a statement ready to go the minute this meeting became public.
You don't need a full, well-worded statement to make a statement though. "We don't speculate on speculation" is itself a (not well-worded) statement. This is exactly the sort of thing where if it isn't true you make a preliminary statement like "The reported meeting between SWE, David Gallop, and ourselves is a total fabrication. We will make a full statement tomorrow," If it isn't true then a simple statement like that is far less damaging than letting speculation run rampant for the best part of a day.
I think that there isn't a statement because they didn't expect Gallop to leak what was going on. I get the feeling that the FFA isn't actually keen on the plan because it's subverting the expansion process and they're trying to scuttle it ASAP. In the FFA's ideal world they get the license back from Welnix and charge an expansion team the rumoured AU$10m themselves.