By Dale Budge
Club rugby needs to seriously consider a seismic shift and start playing games on Friday nights as opposed to Saturdays.
Club rugby has forever been played on Saturday afternoons and that has served the sport well over the years. Saturdays were for a game of footy mid-afternoon before a night in the clubrooms drinking and socialising with friends.
That filled the coffers of the club bar and in-turn propped up the club. The model worked perfectly.
But in recent times life has changed for many. Now we work weekends more. We push ourselves so hard during the week that weekends can often be for family time or for other projects that we once had more time to complete.
Talk to players and the biggest complaint they have about rugby is that they don’t have time to do enough outside of work and playing footy. Many stop playing for that very reason.
Most clubs are struggling with playing numbers and we have seen clubs fall away and grades disappear to reflect a reduction in playing numbers.
The busier we have become the less time we spend in the clubrooms on Saturday afternoons and evenings and therefore those bar takings that once made the whole model work are doing less and less.
Many clubs survive thanks to grant funding and pokie money these days but there is certainly a push from various sectors to reduce that to control problem gambling.
Fast forward 10 years and forecast what playing numbers look like, what bar takings are and what money clubs get from grant funding and it makes for pretty ugly reading.
We need to re-think the model.
Friday night footy ticks so many boxes and could make it all sustainable again.
Players could commit to playing Friday nights before having the rest of the weekend free to do what they please. It would make it work much better for families or for those that need to work Saturday mornings.
It would also work better from a spectator point of view.
At the end of a work week people often can’t be bothered cooking dinner. They are often looking for cheap and easy entertainment and heading along to the park to watch footy would work perfectly.
Clubs need to think about catering for Friday night dinners, right there on the sideline. They need to set up areas around the field where you could get liquor licences so spectators can watch the footy while safely consuming alcohol. They need to look at heating and shelter to keep spectators warm and dry during winter months.
Maybe the best way forward for clubs is to invest in wood fire pizza ovens, facilities next to the field to make burgers, fries etc and to do coffee and hot beverages. My guess is they would turn over more doing that on a Friday night than they would over the bar on a Saturday.
If Friday night became a dedicated night for rugby it would be easier for people to stay at the venue after the game rather than playing earlier on a Saturday and trying to fit other social events in later in the night.
Rugby is a tradition here in New Zealand and long may that continue but if we are too firm in doing what we’ve always done we run the risk of becoming obsolete.
Sport should always entertain the idea of doing things better, keeping up with modern thinking and being prepared to adapt.
The time has come to seriously consider when we play rugby and how we fund it before it is too late.
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