Tigers lose decades of history in deluge
THE Hermit Park Tigers have seen decades of sporting history washed away after their home ground at the Murray Sporting Complex was flooded.
Neil French Oval resembled a lake, save for the second storey of the yellow clubhouse.
The Tigers are Townsville’s oldest Australian rules football club and the twotime defending premiers, but president Brennan Gibson said they had done it tough during the floods.
“We went under so our ground and the clubhouse have taken a fair bit of damage,” he said.
“We’ve certainly lost a lot of stuff. Some things insurance will be able to fix, but some things insurance can’t really fix, like some of the mementos that the club has.
“We are the oldest club in the comp. We’re the only ones standing from day one so to lose certain things definitely hurts. I know it’s starting to hurt some of the life members.
“Other than that, we’ve got a lot of support behind us so we’ll rally together and sort it out.”
The AFL Townsville season is scheduled to kick off on Saturday, March 23, but Gibson said it was still too early to know when the field and clubhouse will be back to playing condition.
The Tigers usually train on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but players have instead spent this week helping out with the flood recovery efforts after some club members lost everything.
SOME THINGS INSURANCE WILL BE ABLE TO FIX, BUT SOME THINGS INSURANCE CAN’T REALLY FIX BRENNAN GIBSON
“We went around into Idalia and helped them clean up and did some loads to the tip and things like that, and we’re going to continue to do that until such a time that we can train again,” Gibson said.
“We’re trying to be optimistic about whether we can have games here at the start of the season. We’ll do our due diligence and make sure it’s safe to train and play on before we get into that.”
Meanwhile, next door at Muldoon Oval, the Curra Swans have avoided the worst of the damage as their clubhouse was elevated enough to stay out of the floodwaters.
Swans president Kris Farmer described the field as a “rice paddy” and said mould was still an issue in the club- house, but other than that, he felt they had fared surprisingly well.
“We seem to have got off fairly lightly compared to the other places out there. We’ve got a lot of mould, as everyone does in that area, but our clubhouse stayed up out of the water,” he said.
“The field copped it – it’s like a rice paddy at the mo- ment. You see four inches (10cm) of grass, which looks good, but there’s two inches of water sitting on top of it.
“The pitch is unplayable for probably a couple of weeks while it dries out.”
Farmer said some of the club’s members were affected by the floods and the Swans were organising a working bee this weekend to help.