Caversham Association Football Club is working through a proposal to move to Hancock Park, the home of the Pirates Rugby Club.
Caversham is looking to trim costs and get a more suitable ground. With Pirates failing to field a side in the premier rugby competition last year and doubts over its future, it was looking at how it would continue and merging with another club was an option.
Caversham club president Steve Fleming said the club had had meetings both with Pirates and the Dunedin City Council and at the club’s annual meeting last month, members had voted to move the club to Hancock Park.
The club was located at Tonga Park but favoured a move to the sand-based grounds at Hancock Park.
"For half of last season our grounds at Tonga Park were out of action. We have to pay insurance, we have to pay a bar licence, all the other expenses," he said.
"It seems too easy for us that there is a club right near us which has a clubrooms, has good grounds, had good facilities which we will be able to train on and use.
"Times have changed. You just don’t get the same amount of people coming back to the club rooms. And a club like ours, when much of the season we don’t have any home games, that means even less people are coming into the rooms.
"It [moving] just stacks up."
He said the club had discussed bringing the lights it owned at Tonga Park to Hancock Park and it would hopefully enable both football and rugby to be played at night there.
Fleming said the clubbought the lights about 10 years ago with the intention of holding games at Tonga Park. But lights had to be on both sides of the field and with Tonga Park also a cricket ground, the club could not put the lights in the right position for games. Caversham had cleared most of its debt and having fewer expenses would help. It was hoped to have two football grounds on Hancock Park, taking the space of one of the rugby grounds.
Caversham had five senior teams and 10 junior sides. Its senior side won the premier league.
Pirates chairwoman Jess Tuhega said the proposal would be discussed at the club’s annual meeting on December 10.
Club sport had changed greatly in the past five years and clubs could not sit on their hands.
The two clubs had been talking and both saw plenty of advantages of coming together.
"If you are not prepared to change then you are going to slowly die. So all options have to be looked at," she said.
"No club wants to close so you have to look at alternatives."
The club intended to field one men’s and one women’s team next season but would not have a premier team.
