The site is for a cycling club.
ALthough its a completely different Level I've been looking at the big cycling team sites like Sky and and quick-step and they all favour top level menus.
PArt of the problem is that one of the people who is part of the club board was a member of another cycling club who's website has a side menu.
IMHO it looks really dated whilst the team sky type sites look really modern at least that's my opinion.
The site is going to be a mix of Text heavy pages, forum and Gallery.