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beer and pokies are no longer enough to keep some clubs alive,
writes Allan Tieu.
The old-style RSL
club is an endangered species. Throughout the state, suburban
RSLs are being forced to change their image and branch into
new businesses, building gyms, modern nightclubs, tenpin bowling
alleys and even holding bingo nights for gays.
As smoking bans bite
into revenue - and the men and women who established and frequented
the clubs get older - RSL clubs are exploring ways to interact
with a different world.
The push to breathe
new life into the clubs may even result in the unimaginable:
abandonment of the traditional ban on thongs and collarless
shirts.
Over the past few
years the drive to reinvent the RSL has become more urgent,
with a spate of club closures forced by higher taxes on gaming
machines and falling revenue.
In the past decade
41 RSL clubs have closed, many of them as a result of lack of
patronage.
The most recent to
close its doors was Marrickville RSL on Illawarra Road, which
lost 40 per cent of its patrons over the past year - blamed
by insiders on the new anti-smoking rules.
But after the success
of the high-profile Sydney Theatre Awards on Monday night, with
Cate Blanchett as star guest, and enthusiastic feedback from
the event's organisers, Paddington RSL now expects to be booked
again for next year's ceremony. It won the event from three
other more salubrious venues.
The club's manager,
Larry Dorman, said it was not unusual for his club to step outside
the mould of the average RSL. It had responded to its community
in many different ways, including pre-Mardi Gras activities
such as "Bingay". "It's no longer an exclusive
men's society like it might have been in the past," Dorman
said.
The chief executive
of the RSL and Services Clubs Association, Graeme Carroll, said
a lot of the returned servicemen who helped establish the clubs
in the 1950s had died, leaving a membership vacuum.
The smoking bans
introduced in July had also had a huge impact. "There are
increased corporate governance regulations, placing additional
pressures on the clubs. They have to look to ways to reduce
their reliance on revenue from gaming and smoking-related activities,"
he said.
"There's certainly
going to be a consolidation of the industry over the next few
years. There'll be some that may well not survive unless they
can be increasingly creative in attracting new and younger visitors
to the clubs."
Mr Carroll said that
clubs had done this in different ways. Dee Why RSL, for example,
had built a tenpin bowling alley.
"Incidentally,
while trying to deal with taking the focus off smoking-related
activities in clubs, many have turned to health," he said.
His examples include Canterbury RSL, which has a large fitness
centre, and clubs such as Harbord Diggers, which offers yoga
and pilates classes.
Jeremy Bath, a spokesman
for ClubsNSW, said that despite all the changes, the clubs were
not diversifying in ways that departed from their values and
traditions, and they were still unified by a sense of patriotism.
"It is not so
much about reducing services but broadening them to make sure
they have a wider demographic," he said. "They take
their responsibilities as custodians of the RSL legacy very
seriously. Although the diggers would laugh if they came in
today and saw people in tights doing pilates."
He said efforts to
attract young people would also extend to their attitude towards
dress regulations. "Clubs might change their policies to
accommodate 18- to 24-year-olds, and that may be an acceptance
of thongs and non-collared shirts," he said.
Paddington's Dorman
said: "You have to reposition yourself and accommodate
your market, or you'll be in a position like Marrickville.
"But for us
it's exciting as well - getting the new people into Paddo. We
once looked at the idea of selling off the club and replacing
it with shops, but we took the plunge and decided to keep it
as an RSL club. It's finally paid off."
What does the
future hold for Burleigh Heads RSL Sub-branch??
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