Flag raising ceremony welcomes new dawn for Bay chartered clubs

Greendale Services Association president Frank Keenan swipes-in for the first afternoon back at the Taradale Club. Photo / Paul Taylor

Hub-of-the community chartered clubs have reopened with an air of optimism, including a symbolic flag-raising ceremony to launch a post-lockdown new dawn.

The ceremony took place at the Taradale Club in Wharerangi Rd, Napier, on Thursday afternoon, just before the 3pm reopening but also cementing a relationship with an adjunct of uniformed services members and doubling as an Anzac Day commemoration which was unable to take place because of the eight-week Covid-19 lockdown.

Amid the events, the association decided it would be responsible for the replacing of what club chairman Lloyd Fitness concedes was a "tatty and worn" flag on the mast outside.

Club chairman Lloyd Fitness said it stemmed from the formation of the Greendale Services Association, now affiliated to the club and based around a group who had been members of the Taradale RSA.

Association president Frank Keenan said the association had extended membership from the army, navy and air force sectors to all uniformed national services, including police officers and firefighters – the members being collectively referred to as "patriots".

Of about 60 association members, about 25 attended the ceremony, which was also attended by Fitness, club operations manager Andre Beneke and club member and Napier mayor Kirsten Wise, just arrived from a council meeting lasting about three hours.

Fitness said the club now has over 1500 members, including those from affiliated sports such as pool, darts and indoor and lawn bowls.

While the club reopens initially with shortened hours as it and other clubs take the first steps towards recovery, limited in the first stages to a maximum 100 in the bar at any time, seated and served at tables, the chairman is looking forward to a return of promising pre-Covid signs of increasing patronage numbers.

He said that protected the club to a degree, but like others it had needed the wage subsidies, but added: "You can have a lot of members, but you still need them coming to the club."

The Taradale RSA was also protected by the wage subsidy scheme, but also income from the rentals it owns, and money in the bank, enabling it to use part of the time of the closure to advance its own renovations and paint job, said manager Ben Allen.

It also opened on Thursday, but at the regular time of 9am.

Other clubs reopening included Clubs Hastings, the Napier RSA, and small volunteer-staffed Bay City Club, also in Napier.

Clubs New Zealand CEO Larry Graham said it was certainly challenging times, and clubs were looking forward to "getting the tills ringing again just to get some revenue coming in".

Some had histories of more than 140 years and were well established as hubs of their locality and working communities.

Clubs NZ represents about 300 clubs, including 96 RSAs, in total about 85 per cent of chartered clubs nationwide, with collective membership of about 300,000. It runs 55 national and regional sports tournaments for members, embracing 14 sports.

Most of the sports, such as pool and darts, are not yet able to return to the clubs until further relaxing of the alerts.

"This is a shock for everybody," he said, weighing the consequences of the crisis. "Some were already struggling."

But some were booming, with millions of dollars worth of renovations and upgrading taking place.