‘It’s the same six people’: Sports clubs warn they may fold amid volunteer crisis

Saturday, 30 May 2026

Sports clubs in New Zealand are struggling with a lack of volunteers to coach, manage and help out with teams.

The New Zealand Amateur Sport Association found club volunteers have steadily declined from a national average of 30 per club in 2018 to 17 in 2024.

Porirua’s Western Suburbs Football Club has 1100 kids playing and 2000 parents but struggles to get volunteer help.

One of the largest football clubs on Auckland’s North Shore is warning sports clubs could fold if more people don’t volunteer to help run them.

It comes after a New Zealand Amateur Sport Association report found club volunteers have steadily declined from a national average of 30 per club in 2018 to 17 in 2024.

Cole Hinton, the immediate past chairman of Northern Rovers Football Club, is surprised the number is that high.

Hinton, who has spent 10 of the past 15 years on the board of Glenfield Rovers and then Northern Rovers, said the attitude to volunteering reflected society’s wider dwindling willingness to help out.

It’s one of the reasons he has stepped away from a direct role in the club he played a pivotal role in creating when Glenfield Rovers merged with Forrest Hill Milford United in 2020.

“It’s hard to stay motivated when you don’t have others putting their hands up to help,” Hinton said.

“We are a big club and we should be able to find 50 people who are prepared to help, but we don’t. It’s the same six people who are working around the club, the same 10 parents who offer to coach or manage a team.

“It’s a battle, and it shouldn’t be.”

Since the club’s inception, its board has never been full. “And we don’t have enough coaches or managers either,” Hinton said.

“We had dwindling numbers of volunteers before the amalgamation and it was hoped that would change, but people actually took it as an opportunity to walk away further.”

Annual surveys by the New Zealand Amateur Sport Association paint a bleak picture.

Long-term board tenure is steadily falling, with those willing to be on a board longer than five years dropping from 63.6% in 2018 to 51.9% in 2024.

Reasons given include compliance and reporting requirements; a lack of time; and the overall costs of being part of a club.

The association is poised to lobby every MP ahead of the election, hoping to simplify the governance side of clubs which its chairman, Gordon Noble-Campbell, said is a significant deterrent to potential board volunteers.

“Why would someone put themselves in the position where, if something went wrong, they would be the fall guy?” Noble-Campbell said of compliance rules.

Porirua’s Western Suburbs Football Club’s long-standing chairman, Dean Eagar, agreed, and also echoed Hinton’s concerns that sports clubs will fold if more people don’t step in.

“We’re Wellington’s largest sports club. We have about 1100 kids so that’s more than 2000 parents. But if you have a working bee, four people turn up.”

Eagar said issues like compliance are definitely a factor, with councils and sports governing bodies continuing to impose complicated compliance rules and the associated costs.

But the basic willingness to help out has significantly diminished.

“People say they are too busy, but they’re standing on the sideline with their coffee from BP so what are they doing?” Eagar said.

“Are they too busy at 7am to come and help set up? People say they need to get away for dinner at the end of the day. Well we would all like to go home but things still need to be put away.”

Eagar said it was those many small jobs that continued to be done by just a handful of people. Things like sorting kit, inflating balls, helping behind the bar and running sausage sizzles.

Finding coaches was a perennial problem. “We have about 136 kids’ teams and every year we are short about 30 coaches. You don’t have to be a former All White to coach 5- and 6-year-olds.”

Ponsonby Rugby Club, one of New Zealand’s oldest, biggest and most successful, is also struggling to have enough coaches for its 48 junior and 10 senior teams.

“Some teams we have three or four people wanting to coach and others we are struggling to find anyone,” says general manager Patrick Rhodes. “Volunteers are becoming thinner and thinner on the ground.”

That view is shared by Nicki Compton, chair of Tauranga Netball, which has 600 teams that play across three nights and on Saturdays. “We are blessed that we have a core group of 15 volunteers who keep coming back each year, but it is harder to attract new people.”

Noble-Campbell said sports clubs have long been a key part of New Zealand’s social structure and his association was worried that as clubs folded, that part of New Zealand culture would disappear.

“That sense of community and social cohesion which sport delivers is seriously under threat.”