The Club

Ngongotaha is a sports club, with the purpose of providing the opportunity for all members of the community to play football.  In legal terms we are an incorporated society and are bound by a set of rules.  We have to operate in accordance with the rules, which require that the club is managed by a committee elected by its members.

We run teams for all ages - from our youngest, 4 year olds to 60, our oldest registered player.  If you want to play football, we'll do our best to provide something that suits you.

The number of players varies from year to year.  In the 2020 season we had 158 members - 75 senior men and 81 junior players (that year we were collaborating with Rotorua United and the numbers are not directly comparable to previous years when we have had up to 220 members of which 160 were juniors). 

The club's home is at Tamarahi Reserve, Stembridge Road, Ngongotaha.  We pay an annual fee to the Rotorua Lakes Council to use the field and lease the site for our clubhouse.  The clubhouse has changing rooms, toilets and some storage on the ground floor and a clubroom with a kitchen and bar upstairs. We own the building and are responsible for the maintenance and operating costs.

We also use the field at Jessie Martin Park for training, and some senior and U19 games.  All junior games are played at Puarenga Park.

Paying for the Club

Running the club costs money.  For every player there are compulsory affiliation fees to New Zealand Football (the national organisation responsible for how football is run nationally - playing, coaching and setting aims and objectives) and to WaiBop (the regional organisation responsible for implementing NZ Football's strategy and running the competitions we play in).  There are also fees for entering the competitions and insurance for all members.  Junior fees are set at levels that just cover those complsory charges and have not increased for several years.

As well as the affiliation fees, senior teams need to contribute to the ground hire, training ground hire, match balls, after match hospitality and running costs of the clubhouse (rates, water, power, insurance, licencing, routine maintenance, for example).  Subscription fees are therefore higher for senior football.

So where does the money come from?  The only reliable source of funding is through the player subscriptions.  We try to keep fees as low as we can, but when setting the budget the committee needs to make sure it can pay for the essential running costs and compulsory charges described above.

We have been lucky in past years to receive support from local sponsors and in 2023 we had support from McDonalds Rotorua, Bev and Jason Waller (Professionals Real Estate), Palazzo Kitchens, Bennett Electrical, Douglas Automotive and Engineering, TrueHomes Cabins Limited, AJL Building Services, VIP Plumbing, O'Briens Plumbing and Bathroomware, Top Plastering BOP,  Hennessy's Irish Bar,  CI Safety and Apparel Ltd, Number 8 Wire Restaurant.  To be successful in future , we need volunteers that are prepared to talk to potential sponsors and secure their support for the club.

Funding is also available from charitable organisations. In previous years we have obtained grants from Pub Charity towards the cost of travel for our Northern League teams and from New Zealand Community Trust for new strip for the entire club and some balls and equipment.  We have to make applications for grants, which takes time and effort from volunteers, and there is no guarantee that the applications will be successful (quite a number of our applications are rejected, which means the club has to find the money itself or more likely not carry out the project it intended).

We can run fund raising activities such as barbeques or quiz nights, which could help towards reducing subscription fees, but this needs members to organise the event.  In recent years there has not been many fund raisers run by members of the club, so we have not been able to subsidise subscription fees.

The Committee

The current Committee members are Aaron Lawrence (president), Krystal Davis (treasurer), Shaun Kapua (junior co-ordinator), Paul Skinner (secretary), Markus Dietzel, Carl Chadwick (events organiser), Andrew Bennett, Sam Robinson, Andrew Robb. The committee is elected annually at each AGM (held after the season has finished).

The club has a strategic plan - essentially a five year overview of what it should be doing and what it wants to achieve - and this guides the committee.  However it is now out of date and the next committee need to determine what the club needs to do to reflect what players want.  It is important that members take part in the process of deciding how the club will operate in future by letting the committee know their views or working with the committee to produce a plan and deliver its aims. 

Most of all we need new faces to work on the committee and around the club.  We are a sports club run by its members for its members and not a public facility.  Anything we want out of the club we need to put in.  Realistically the committee is large enough to make sure we pay the bills and keep the doors open, but to run teams, raise funds and develop the potential of the club we need more people to be involved. 
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Priorities and Main Issues

Our two main priorities are the upgrade of changing rooms and toilets and to improve training facilities. 

However there are significant hurdles to both projects.  It would be expensive to improve the showers and toilets in accordance with the current building  regulations.  There is insufficient land on the reserve to provide a suitable training area with adequate floodlights.  We have discussed with the Council how to improve facilities,  made submissions to the annual plan and received support from the council committee.  However at the moment there is uncertainty as to how the Council will develop its sports facilities in the district.  It seems to be the preference to look at consolidation, rather than making piecemeal improvements to existing facilities.  In our view it is unlikely that we will see any short term improvement of our existing facilities in Ngongotaha unless the club funds it. 

Whatever else we do, the clubhouse needs to be maintained (for example, the roof and guttering are in need of repair) so we need to find funding for this. 

For further information about any issues on this page email Paul - [email protected]

Subscription fees - Where does the money go?

This is probably our most frequently asked FAQ question, so here is an explanation of how we spend the subscription fees.

Main expenditure and approximate annual cost

Running Costs

Every player contributes to insurance, for example, but seniors make greater use of the clubhouse and fields so contribute more to cover those running costs.

Competition Costs

The club has to pay affiliation fees for every player – an amount to the national body NZ Football and the regional body WaiBop.

In addition for the senior games we are charged for the referees, usually three officials for a premiership game and one for other senior games. The club is also expected to provide hospitality to the visiting team – approximately $100 per game which works out as $63 per player over the season*.

The club provides playing strips, balls and other equipment for all teams.

This season the premier and reserve teams will also receive a squad kit bag, so the fees are consequently higher for these two teams to cover this cost.

Competition costs per player

Affiliation and Competition Costs

We try to keep our fees as low as we can and have only increased fees for our two senior men’s teams this year. Without more of our members working to raise funds for the club, we have to ensure we raise sufficient funds to pay our competition charges and running costs through subscriptions. These fees are expected to bring in approximately $12,000 this season, which means we do gamble on being able to attract sponsors and donations and raise money through other fundraising to pay the rest of our essential bills.

If you or anyone you know can help the club through sponsorship, we can undertake to use our game days, facebook page, website and correspondence to promote a business. Plus - such gifts ensure the club can continue to provide opportunity for everyone in the local community to take part in sport and we don’t have to raise our fees.