Editorial - Where is our Leagues Club?

January 29, 2026

When the construction of the new sports complex was announced there were two assumptions shared by almost everyone in Oberon. The first was that the land for the project was to be obtained by a land swap with Borg. It made a lot of sense that the best place to expand the factory would be on land next door to the existing plant, rather than half way across town. After all the required probity investigations to ensure that everything was legal and above board, contracts were signed for the construction and things started moving.

The second assumption was that the Leagues Club would move across to the purpose-built facilities in the new grandstand.

Construction started in February 2024. The complex was officially opened on November 28, 2025. On October 23, 2025, Oberon Council announced that the Oberon Rugby Leagues Club had been selected to manage the operations at the new venue.

This article is being published on January 29, 2026. The club's lease on its current premises expires in two days (January 31). Nobody knows when the club will be able to move to the new location (or even what the club's name will be - apparently it can't be a "Rugby Leagues Club").

Two years after construction began, three months after the announcement that the club would be moving, and no opening date for the club in sight. The builders have done their job well. There is no excuse for why the complex isn't operating as envisaged. In the construction business we would have said that moving the club wasn't "on the critical path" but could have been organised in parallel with everything else. It moved to the critical path when there was no club when construction finished.

The process of moving the club (including asking for expressions of interest to run it) should have started the day after the shovels first broke dirt. All the matters necessary to open the club should have been firmly fixed in time - moving the furniture and pokie machines, putting in the beer lines and refrigeration, etc. We should have been able to buy a beer after the official opening ceremony.

Not good enough. And it's not the club's fault - they have been ready to go since last October (and actually even before that) - or the company doing the construction work.

It can be done.

I used to work for a company that built office blocks. We tendered once for a $300 million, three-year construction job for an office block in Sydney. As part of the tendering process we had to specify the date on which tenants could move into the building and the retail shops and food outlets could open on the street level. We had to agree to pay a penalty for every day beyond that date that these conditions could not be met, and that penalty was not insignificant. Even missing the deadline by a short period could have wiped out all the profit for the project. On the specified date, all services to the 44 floors - air conditioning, power, toilets, lifts, etc - had to be working. We spent a lot of money on the project management software to make sure we got the critical path right, that tasks that could be carried out at the same time as others were scheduled accordingly and nothing was forgotten. This included activities outside the control of the construction company.

We signed anyway, as did every other company that submitted a bid. As I said - it can be done. And it was.