R. I. P. Balmain

Looks like the Leagues cub has been told porkies again.
I suppose you can't blame the new developers not coming up with the promised extra loot if the site gets turned into a dumping ground for the next 8 years.
Why on earth they thank Darcy for his help I'll never know…. unless because he's helped stopped the go ahead for years.
Wonder how long before his next press release?
 
@ said:
Sad news. Hopefully they can come back at some stage.

Will this have a flow on affect to the Balmain junior league?
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Ryde eastwood & Wests Ashfield looking after BJRL mainly werent they?
 
Thanks to the State ALP government of the day, Darcy Byrne, Benny Elias and Rozelle Village for not only killing the Tigers, but pissing all over the body as well.
 
@ said:
@ said:
Sad news. Hopefully they can come back at some stage.

Will this have a flow on affect to the Balmain junior league?

Ryde eastwood & Wests Ashfield looking after BJRL mainly werent they?
Click to expand...
Click to expand...

Ryde Eastwood sponsor a number of clubs same as Wests Ashfield. The Balmain Junior League has its own board but I am unsure where they get their funding from. But we may be right.
 
Very sad news , a foundation club that has now gone , be it from bad decisions by board , Directors and grubs , it's a sad day when a great club like Balmain Dies , I hope this does not impact Wests Tigers at all but for me I am a Wests Tigers supporter from the Balmain side and life goes on , and yes I'm very sad by this and I will get over it but I still,have a club to support , I was very vocal about our merger and did not like it as I loved the Balmain Tigers from age 6 and I'm 54 , long live the black and gold and go hard the White Black and Gold Wests Tigers , Time for bed to sleep,on this sad news
 
Terrible news for those of us who began our Rugby League journey following Balmain. Miss my dad every day but grateful he is not here to witness this, cause it would have been a real tough day for him.
 
Also blame the casino for taking the cream of the gambling money that led to ultimately unwise decisions by maybe unprofessional managers to "compete". In hindsight maybe Balmain should have merged with the Magpies a lot earlier, as soon as the Casino opened or earlier, without doing the expansion ride.

In comparison if you look at Catholic Dooleys at Lidcombe, over decades they purchased every premises around them and now altogether 6 times bigger at least as now multi-storied as well. Well this settles the debate - rugby league is not played in Heaven.
 
The whole thing is like watching a sick relative with no quality of life who you know deep down will never recover. Balmain should have been euthanised years ago, because deep down we all knew what the end result was going to be,
 
@ said:
Also blame the casino for taking the cream of the gambling money that led to ultimately unwise decisions by maybe unprofessional managers to "compete". In hindsight maybe Balmain should have merged with the Magpies a lot earlier, as soon as the Casino opened or earlier, without doing the expansion ride.

In comparison if you look at Catholic Dooleys at Lidcombe, over decades they purchased every premises around them and now altogether 6 times bigger at least as now multi-storied as well. Well this settles the debate - rugby league is not played in Heaven.
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Along with the pokies tax and the change to the smoking laws within premises. These two things impacted little clubs greatly.
Look at the Tigers markets club.
The Sydney markets club was a vibrant little club. It sponsored our football team at the time and the restaurant was packed every night. They had to reduce the amount of pokies that could have on the premise and the smoking laws meant they had to provide an external area for people to continue their night at, a renovation to ensure that was near on impossible, it meant all the smokers had to stand out on the balcony.
Balmain went through exactly the same thing. My mate and I was at Tigers one weekend night and the place was dead. We saw Benny Elias and said hi. He invited us to sit down with him and a manager of the club. They expressed the impact of the pokies tax along with the introduction of the casino had started to kill the club and they needed to look at alternatives. Benny had big ideas but he always wanted to ensure the survival of the club. He saw expansion as the only way. It was around the time of the acquisitioning of the properties around the leagues club, the government promise and how it was supposed to make the club great.
At that time the Apia club down from Leichhardt Oval just got bought for 1 million dollars by funny enough my next door neighbor, the guy who owns l’montage. I asked why they didn’t Aquire the Appia club and they responded they had no money. They just spent it shoring up all the surrounding properties for a big vision that never came to light.
 
Imagine if you wanted to renovate your house and the council told you you had to buy other properties around you to make it happen, then the government told you they'd be bringing a train station in around the corner from your house.

And you spent all your money suring-up local property and preparing large renovation plans, ensuring you had ample parking and thinking about the new property values once the train station was completed.

And then the government asked you to move out whilst they started work on the station, and you'd be back in a jiffy.

And then the government changed, the station is cancelled, nobody wants to approve your plans, you can't get back into your house and you own these properties you don't need.

If you were to remove any major club from it's primary premises for a decade, whilst also blocking plans for a refurbishment, you'd put any one of them out of business.

I'll never really know whether or not Tigers' renovation plans were excessive or unrealistic, but considering they approved those monstrous Balmain power station developments a decade earlier, I can't understand how the council suddenly became so concerned about traffic and building heights.
 
Very sad… For the history of the game... And personally.
LO a co cup games were a hang out for me as a teen... And being involved with my son in the juniors for more than a decade... Some of the best days of my life.... Kept all his jumpers
 
@ said:
Imagine if you wanted to renovate your house and the council told you you had to buy other properties around you to make it happen, then the government told you they'd be bringing a train station in around the corner from your house.

And you spent all your money suring-up local property and preparing large renovation plans, ensuring you had ample parking and thinking about the new property values once the train station was completed.

And then the government asked you to move out whilst they started work on the station, and you'd be back in a jiffy.

And then the government changed, the station is cancelled, nobody wants to approve your plans, you can't get back into your house and you own these properties you don't need.

If you were to remove any major club from it's primary premises for a decade, whilst also blocking plans for a refurbishment, you'd put any one of them out of business.

I'll never really know whether or not Tigers' renovation plans were excessive or unrealistic, but considering they approved those monstrous Balmain power station developments a decade earlier, I can't understand how the council suddenly became so concerned about traffic and building heights.
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The site is cursed.
 
Re those changing smoking laws. The Byron Ex Services club did a reno job every change of the law - never once did they let the smokers down. They spent millions on it. I have two friends addicted to both - cigs and the machines. And sometimes they cry to borrow money in spite of having permanent full time jobs.
 
@ said:
Re those changing smoking laws. The Byron Ex Services club did a reno job every change of the law - never once did they let the smokers down.
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Yep,every viable Club adapted to the OHS/RBT/Pokies/Smoking etc laws,our Club has been poorly run for Decades with lots of rumours of Staff with fingers in the till and this was Decades after Humpreys.
It already been mentioned the challenges the Club had with the changing demographic in the Balmain/Leichhardt area but the Club was sitting on Millions of Dollars of land and had met the criteria for entry into the NRL and yet put their handout for the 'fools gold' to merge with Wests's.

I remember a Newsletter a few years back where they said they would be paying 'market value' rent on the new premises when they were eventually built,anybody that has a IQ over Moron would know they couldn't service their Debt and run the Leagues Club profitably if they paid full rent on the premises.
Patronage at the Leagues Club had dropped off since the 1980's as mentioned in a previous post but it was still ticking over.

Anyway sad Day,only hope now is the Administrators comes to a deal with a White Knight which is unlikely now we have given away all our assets.
I feel sorry for all the hard work and sacrifice by the Members in the 1950/60's to get the Leagues Club up and running only to see it thrown away by decisions made on the basis of poor advice from people that only had $ signs in their eyes.
 
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