Alison Mitchell
Alison Mitchell looks at the carnage left at the Gabba following Adele’s recent concert, and the ensuing fallout
Carnage at the Gabba following a performance from Adele
Pages 14-15
The Gabba has been at the centre of a row between Australia’s national sports this week, after claims that preparation for next November’s Ashes Test wrongly took priority over the staging of the first ever AFL Women’s Grand Final – the showpiece of Australia’s inaugural professional football competition for women. What’s more, British singer Adele was the unwitting catalyst for the argument.
There has been an enormous surge of goodwill and popularity around the first season of the Women’s AFL with crowds of 30,000 having been expected at the Gabba for Saturday’s Grand Final between the Brisbane Lions and Adelaide Crows.
The match, though, has now been controversially shifted to the Gold Coast after the surface was deemed unfit following two huge Adele concerts earlier in the month that saw the stage cover almost the whole of the square, and the outfield covered by more than 18,000 square metres of flooring.
Football sources argue that the damaged surface could have been repaired and kept sufficiently soft underfoot in order to stage the Grand Final as planned, but the Gabba curator, Kevin Mitchell, has been accused of sewing the square instead, in order to start early preparation of his Test wicket.
He replaced areas of damaged turf with slabs of new grass, which hadn’t taken by the time an independent assessment of the stadium was made. It meant parts of the surface weren’t stable enough underfoot for football.
The ground is owned and managed by Stadiums Queensland, but Mitchell said the ground needed six to eight weeks of ‘no traffic’ in order for the grass to bed-in, hence a letter from Queensland Cricket asking for the Grand Final and the first few games of the AFL men’s season to be played elsewhere so that the ground could have time to be fit for cricket, in particular the Ashes Test starting on November 23. The Queensland government and the sport minister got involved, and the decision to move the football matches finally came on safety grounds.
It has left the AFL furious with the curator, who has been in charge at the Gabba since 1991, when he took over full responsibility from his father, Kevin Mitchell Snr.
No one knows the ground better than he does, but it hasn’t stopped AFL personnel questioning why the grass couldn’t be laid the day after the last AFL game on August 26, rather than disrupt such a showpiece football game in what is an historic year for the sport.
After cricketing officials initially claimed the concert nearly ruined the square, Cricket Australia issued a statement this week, which will only go some way to placating those who feel cricket has ridden roughshod over football.
“This is a very unfortunate situation to be dealing with,” said CA chief executive James Sutherland. “As longterm tenants of the Gabba, we’re very sympathetic to the Brisbane Lions and the AFL’s situation. It’s never ideal to have to move a fixture, particularly given how successful the AFL Women’s competition has been.
“The centre area of the ground is incredibly important for both our sports – and together with the AFL, we will be looking to engage with Stadiums Queensland about future major events at the Gabba, to ensure the turf isn’t compromised in this way again.
“Since the recent damage to the centre wicket block, we’ve had very constructive talks with Stadiums Queensland and have been given reassurances from them on the quality of the pitch for the first Test of the Ashes.”
Cricket authorities were always keen to avoid having to re-lay the entire square. The last time that happened was after the ground hosted football (soccer, to Australians) during the Sydney Olympics in 2000. The re-turfing changed the way the surface behaved for cricket, with experts saying it took 15 years before the square recovered its traditional bouncy characteristics.
The recent row has ignited a debate as to whether the Gabba ought to feature drop-in pitches like the MCG and many of the other multi-event stadiums in Australia. Given the
The recent row has ignited a debate as to whether the Gabba ought to have drop-in pitches like the MCG and other multi-sport stadia
increased pressure on the use of the Gabba, illustrated by both the Adele concert and the introduction of the women’s AFL competition, there is certainly a case for using a drop-in. The sport minister has backed the idea but Stadiums Queensland maintain they don’t have the infrastructure to install or maintain a drop-in pitch, and there appears very little appetite to introduce it. Former Australia wicketkeeper Ian Healy is fervently against the idea, insisting the calendar can be managed, stating that the Adele concert and the women’s match were a one-off, and warning that the ground risks losing its world-class cricketing reputation if drop-ins are brought in.
“The Gabba is as close to a text book pitch as you can get,” he told The
Courier Mail. “It has life upfront, great batting from half way through day one, then deterioration which a quality spinner can enjoy.’’
So it seems for now as if everything at the Gabba is on track for the Ashes as curator Mitchell would like it. Although going forward, the question of the dropin might not go away so easily. As Adele was belting out the lyrics to Someone
Like You – “Nothing compares / No worries or cares” – she would have had no idea of the rumpus that was to follow.