Three-hundred years of collective rugby league experience will be lost to Group 16 when the standing committee of the Tathra Sea Eagles resign this week says club spokesman Peter Finucane.
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Finucane said the committee had become disillusioned with Group 16 and saw no other option but to step down after exhausting all avenues to enter the playing competition.
“It’s a massive blow to our community, but we’ve been forced into this situation,” Finucane said.
“We didn’t want to pull the plug, but it has been made so hard for us to come back into Group 16 rather than easy.”
None of the standing members will return to reform the club next year, or in the future Finucane said.
“If we can’t get it running now, I don’t think we’ll ever get it back off the ground,” he said.
The club has not been dissolved entirely, but finances and assets of the Sea Eagles have been “frozen” until a new committee will stand to relaunch the club.
Finucane said when the club returned in 1996 it was allowed to play with just an under 18s team entered.
However, the excitement around the return of the club saw them also build a reserve grade roster, that made the grand final that same year.
So the committee is now questioning why a proposition of three teams would be so difficult to back when other clubs have been entered on less.
Finucane said the current committee was looking at one final opportunity to get off the ground, but would otherwise be stepping away from the competition immediately.
He said there would be flow on effects within the community.
“For more than 12 months we’ve done the work, we had 40 sponsors lined up ready to go and they’ve all been left in the cold too.”
Finucane said the biggest impact might be to the Tathra Beach Country Club, who developed the club’s grounds and paid for infrastructure upgrades.
“We put in a lot of work building those facilities, we didn’t impose that on anyone, the Country Club paid for it all and we did the work,” Finucane said.
“The facilities are first rate, and realistically they’re now only to the benefit of the soccer club.
“The Country Club is pretty disappointed.”
A Facebook page titled “Let Tathra Play” was set up by supporters and is gaining popularity with 230 likes at the time of print.
Finucane said the club was honoured by the support, but didn’t hold much hope of any turnaround.
“Sport should be about including people and that is all we want,” he said.
An official resignation letter has been signed collectively by the committee and will be supplied to Group 16 and the CRL.
The letter was also supplied to the BDN and will be published online.