NGUNGURU SPORTS & RECREATION CLUB

The Club has come a long way since its humble beginnings as a boggy farm paddock in the late 1970s. The paddock was leased as a playing ground for the local rugby team, formed in 1975. The first Club committee, formed in 1979, took over the lease of the land and began the transformation of the facility into what it is today. The rugby club room, now the tractor shed on the far side of the playing field, was the first building owned by the Club.

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Then over some four years of patient endeavour by the whole community, the sports ground was developed into a facility suitable for competitive sport. The official opening of the sports ground took place on 20 March 1982, a gala day whose highlight was a special rugby match between the Northland Vikings (a virtual Northland side) and a star-studded Ngunguru Invitation side which included three former All Blacks.

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The land next to the Club became available for a golf course in 1988, and from February 1989 there followed months of furiously intensive work, as local contractors and volunteers shaped the bare land into fairways, tees and greens.  Incredibly, only nine months later the 9-hole golf course had its official opening.

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For the next ten years, the Club expanded its focus by constructing new buildings and encouraging a wider variety of sports and activities.  By 1990 rugby had disappeared from the list of activities on offer, but the Club fielded a men’s cricket team from 1984 until 1989. In March 1992 the Northern Advocate reported that ‘Many Sporting Clubs Share the Ngunguru Club's Umbrella.’ By then, badminton was well established, the Bowling Club had come into being in 1985, the Tennis Club in 1990.