Pioneer Sports Club Decides On Recess

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31753, 9 August 1968, Page 12

Pioneer Sports Club Decides On Recess

The Pioneer Amateur Sports Club will go into recess for not more than three months. This was decided by 20 votes to three

at a special general meeting of the club last evening as an amendment to a motion that the club be dissolved.

The meeting was called to discuss the future of the club in the light of its declining membership and financial problems.

Sports formerly associated with the club which have now set up their own administrative headquarters include Rugby, hockey, cricket, tennis, softball, table tennis, cycling, swimming and motorracing. Sports still using the club for meetings regularly are mountaineering, yachting, surf life saving, motoring and boxing.

The president of the club (Mr R. W. Geoghegan) told the 35 members and delegates at the meeting that any decision would have to be ratified at another meeting no earlier than a month later. This would give them an opportunity to “cool off or heat up,” according to their views on the matter.

He said the problems of the club were in part associated with the trend in recent years for sports organisations to establish their own premises away from the centre of the city, the lack of adequate parking in the area, and the club’s failure to gain a charter.

“The function of the club is to encourage and advance amateur sport, and this it is no longer able to do. It has done nothing concrete for sport for years. As a club it has given precious little support either.” Mr Geoghegan said that the Pioneer Amateur Sports Club, Ltd, a company formed to administer the finances of the club had remitted the club’s rent, helped pay for cleaning and paid its secretarial fees. Other measures aimed at preventing the club from running down had enjoyed only temporary success. The club had existed for nearly 90 years, but it could not afford to continue. Its membership was from fragmented groups with no common interest. An income of at least $5OOO a year would be needed to do something of benefit to sport. The memorandum of the company did not allow it to make donations to sporting bodies. The company was not in jeopardy, and it had taken steps to draft a new memorandum so that it could assist sport. In the event of the club dissolving, the company could still carry on letting its rooms at the comer of Gloucester Street and Oxford Terrace, could let the whole of the building, sell the building, or allow another club to be formed.

During the last 10 years the club had lost $l5OO in spite of assistance from the company, and about half of this loss had been incurred

in the last year. The club was running down the company’s ability to do anything for it. Mr W. V. Cowles said a recess would give an opportunity for some person to come up with a bright idea on how the situation could be improved. Once the club was dissolved it was gone for ever.

Mr R. T. Dowker, representing the Canterbury Cricket Association, made what he described as a “tentative proposal” of the association that the club build above its rooms in Hagley Park and share its facilities.

Dr. J. F. Mann, a member of the board of directors of the company, said it had been concerned about its own and the club’s position for many years. It had a wonderful asset in its building and had been offered $BO,OOO for it some time ago.

It was an asset which could only increase in value, but the company was able to do nothing to further the interests of amateur sport at present which was one of its primary functions.