Yes, madness. As you say, understandable, but still madness.
A few years ago the local football club, missing a clubhouse, asked the bowls club about a commercial arrangement for winter after-match functions in the bowls bar. This was declined because of a few bowls members who wanted a Saturday night drink.
These clubs rely a lot on a diminishing number of dedicated but aging or time-poor volunteers, competing for sparse revenue, foregoing an opportunity to cut overheads through economies of scale, wasting the chance to recruit each other's members, and missing out on creating a broad-based community hub that goes beyond sport.
I think it's a model that is starting to prove its value e.g. Elmwood, Papatoetoe. I believe it stands the best chance of giving grassroots sports a boost, including connecting with local high schools to transition leavers into their next sports community. I don't see anything from Sports NZ that recognises this as a strategy they should resource, beyond providing a Yammer network, but maybe I'm missing something.
One of the issues with rugby at school/club level is the season is too short. Early spring and all those kids are now playing basketball, because rugby is over.
Couldn't agree more about sports hubs. My local suburban park, in one of the main centres, has seven sports clubs - Bowls, Tennis, Cricket, Rugby, Squash, Football, Touch - all within 500 metres of each other. But there are at least six separate management structures, mostly volunteers. And no apparent regional sports strategy to incentivise amalgamation, even at a governance level.
Dead right. I understand the history and the desire to be autonomous but it's not realistic anymore. I look at Onewa Domain on the North Shore in Auckland. They have a cricket club, rugby club and an athletics club on the same park, all with different clubrooms, management and administration. There is a netball centre adjacent and across the road in one direction is an 18-hole public golf course, and the other a YMCA and table tennis club. About 400m away is a squash club, a football club and a tennis club. Oh, and AUT campus with it's sports facilities is about a short par four from the rugby ground too. It makes no sense for these to all operate independently.
Yes, madness. As you say, understandable, but still madness.
A few years ago the local football club, missing a clubhouse, asked the bowls club about a commercial arrangement for winter after-match functions in the bowls bar. This was declined because of a few bowls members who wanted a Saturday night drink.
These clubs rely a lot on a diminishing number of dedicated but aging or time-poor volunteers, competing for sparse revenue, foregoing an opportunity to cut overheads through economies of scale, wasting the chance to recruit each other's members, and missing out on creating a broad-based community hub that goes beyond sport.
I think it's a model that is starting to prove its value e.g. Elmwood, Papatoetoe. I believe it stands the best chance of giving grassroots sports a boost, including connecting with local high schools to transition leavers into their next sports community. I don't see anything from Sports NZ that recognises this as a strategy they should resource, beyond providing a Yammer network, but maybe I'm missing something.
One of the issues with rugby at school/club level is the season is too short. Early spring and all those kids are now playing basketball, because rugby is over.
Couldn't agree more about sports hubs. My local suburban park, in one of the main centres, has seven sports clubs - Bowls, Tennis, Cricket, Rugby, Squash, Football, Touch - all within 500 metres of each other. But there are at least six separate management structures, mostly volunteers. And no apparent regional sports strategy to incentivise amalgamation, even at a governance level.
Dead right. I understand the history and the desire to be autonomous but it's not realistic anymore. I look at Onewa Domain on the North Shore in Auckland. They have a cricket club, rugby club and an athletics club on the same park, all with different clubrooms, management and administration. There is a netball centre adjacent and across the road in one direction is an 18-hole public golf course, and the other a YMCA and table tennis club. About 400m away is a squash club, a football club and a tennis club. Oh, and AUT campus with it's sports facilities is about a short par four from the rugby ground too. It makes no sense for these to all operate independently.