It has been somewhat of a tumultuous start to 2024 for the Club.

I acknowledge that I haven’t managed to put out a Budo Blog/bulletin since January, and we are now in that lovely post ANZAC day autumn that Toowoomba experiences.

Unfortunately, the University/Guild finally came back to us with a cost proposal for restoring our Saturday training (after very hard graft and prompting from our end). Their offer is to charge $77 per hour of training, with 2 hours added to that for a Guild staff member to open the centre up and close it up after we finish.

Even if we factored in the “no charge” training Tuesday and Thursday nights, we would still be paying $462 a week which is essentially an equivalent of over $55 an hour for each hour that we train. This is clearly not sustainable for the Club. Even at our best numbers historically, we would be struggling to get the 13 unique participants (average) for every class that would be needed just to break even on our hall hire costs.

And based on the logic of the documentation provided at out meeting, if we were to restore our training times to what we had till December last year, the University would be charging us close to $700 per week.

Effectively, the University has placed us in a position where we have only one of three options:

1. Wind up BBRD after 16 years of consistent, high quality, contribution to the University and wider Toowoomba community

2. Kill off support for some disciplines entirely, and continue to offer only one session a week for those that remain

3. Move off campus to a more affordable location

None of these options are good ones. However, the first two almost guarantee that the Club would no longer exist by the end of this year. That would seem like a betrayal of all the good work and effort put in over the years, especially in support of the diverse community that the Club represents.

As everyone reading might appreciate, the loss of our Saturday training has had a significant material impact on the Club. Many members, some of whom were travelling as far away as Stanthorpe, Warwick and Laidley for Saturday training were unable to make a regular commitment to train on weeknights. Many members have full time work and weeknight training is not something they can commit to week on week. And only having one, truncated, training session per week (if that for some disciplines) is simply insufficient to allow people to successfully progress.

The slight drawback of being a Club that has existed for as long as it has is that we tend to see the cyclical nature regarding the level of support provided by the University to the Club. We are no longer enjoying the wonderful support provided by the OG Phoenix Central, or indeed the Jenny Rix led Guild that brought us back to Campus in 2020, but instead to the same financial and facilities crunch that forced us off campus the first time at the end of 2011.

It is about now in a post like this that the marketers would be placing a “call to action” from its readers. And a call for action is most definitely needed from everyone who continues to have a connection or an affection for the Club and what we do.

For those that have trained with us in the past and still hold an intention to someday come back to train, take that plunge, get in touch and come train again. The hardest step is the one over the threshold of the dojo. You will always be welcome and supported in your training journey.

For those that life has taken in a different direction but you remember your time with the Club fondly, let your wider circle know the great things that the Club does.

If you have any hot tips for alternative training venues that are less than the exorbitant price we are currently being offered, please let us know. We need roughly 4 hours on a Saturday afternoon, and three hours on a Tuesday and Thursday night. We would also need sufficient storage for the Club’s equipment.

This is the most important help that we need right now to ensure the immediate future for the Club. We have been looking since this uncertainty began in November last year. The available market for venues in Toowoomba is quite tight, and the more suggestions we get, the quicker we can move to the next phase of the Club’s history.

Thank you everyone I do hope to see more of you in or outside of the dojo in the coming weeks and months.