Rugby league clubs in ‘business’

Press, 13 February 1986, Page 23

Rugby league clubs in ‘business’

PA Auckland Rugby league is now a business and clubs must administer it in a businesslike way, the retiring chairman of the Auckland Rugby League, said Mr George Rainey. “However, we have not enough people able to devote the time necessary to run the clubs on a fulltime basis and as a business organisation,” Mr Rainey told the league’s annual meeting. “It is only a matter of time when clubs will have to employ full-time paid staff to do the work. The Auckland Rugby League has done this and increasingly its work is being done on a full-time paid basis.” Clubs would have to

develop charge grounds to finance expenses. “The Auckland Rugby League will be having an eight-team senior competition this season and it will be the ultimate aim to have a fully professional super league competition at the top in Auckland, developing hopefully into a professional national league,” said Mr Rainey. To facilitate a professional super league, clubs would have to develop junior strength. Mr Rainey said the development of a professional league provincially and nationally was more realistic than any proposal made for an Auckland side to play football in the Sydney competi-

He said that the chance of an Auckland or New Zealand team being accepted into the competition was almost non-exis-tent. It was far more realistic to develop a professional league in New Zealand. The former mayor of Auckland, Sir Dove-Meyer Robinson, elected league president for a twentyfirst term, did not entirely agree with a professional championship.

“I. prefer to think of rugby league as still an amateur game providing entertainment for the public,” he said. The league made a profit of $21,095 in the year ended October 31.