The future of the Blayney Bowling Club is up in the air following the announcement of a Memorandum of Understanding to merge the Newstead Bowling Club and Orange Ex-Services Club having being issued.
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The MOU is published on the OESC website and is dated Friday, December 7, 2018.
President of the Blayney Bowling Club Steve Chapman released a statement expressing the club’s surprise.
“The Newstead Bowling Club and Orange Ex-Services Club MOU was certainly news to Blayney Bowling Club,” the statement read.
“It has given us an opportunity to reassess our own planned involvement with Newstead, that both Newstead and Blayney Bowling Clubs have been working towards for the past two years.”
The president of the Newstead Bowling Club, Gary Norton, said that Newstead was going to vote about the merger with OESC early in 2019 as that was what was considered to be in the best interests of the club.
“Discussions and negotiations with OESC have only been this year and an amalgamation takes some time to complete,” he said.
“So where Newstead is at the moment is that we’ve having a vote about going into an amalgamation between Ex-Services and Newstead next year.”
In June Mr Norton was emphatic that the Blayney and Newstead clubs would merge after rumours began circulating in Blayney about the merger process.
“There are some people who undoubtedly think that it shouldn’t go ahead and think that Blayney should go it alone, but the reality of that is that the Blayney club isn’t in a position to stand alone,” Mr Norton said at the time.
That very acknowledgement of Blayney’s financial vulnerability is what is causing the uncertainty and despair at the club.
The CEO of OESC Daniel Perkiss said that after meeting with the board of the Blayney club last week that there were now offers of support for the club on the table.
“We are happy to lend managerial, financial and asset support to the club,” he said.
“We’re in the business of helping small clubs, not in shutting them down.”
Mr Chapman stated that after that meeting with Orange Ex-Services Club last week, the board have met and are now exploring the options for the future of the club.
“Any decision we make will be in the best interests of Blayney Bowling Club and the community. We thank our Bowlers and Social Club Members of Blayney for their ongoing support as we work through the options we are investigating,” he said.