ROOM TO IMPROVE
Footy clubs facing field dilemmas
GOLD Coast’s annual turf war is ramping up again with Aussie rules clubs and cricket teams forced to share fields amid calls to add ovals to the region.
Suns AFL chairman Tony Cochrane in July told the Bulletin the city urgently needed more ovals to keep up with growing numbers, a fact evidenced by the squeeze now going on around the Coast.
Three Coast QAFL clubs currently share grounds with cricket teams.
“We don’t have the ground availability that they do in Brisbane,” Broadbeach coach Beau Zorko said.
WHAT is the price of a QAFL premiership?
The campaign to win one for Brisbane and Gold Coast QAFL clubs begins with the pre-season and the circumstances surrounding how both prepare for the year have two big differences.
Three of Gold Coast’s QAFL clubs – Broadbeach, Palm Beach Currumbin and Surfers Paradise – share their grounds with cricket clubs and don’t have full access to the facilities until April.
Brisbane teams Morningside, Mt Gravatt, Western Magpies, Wilston Grange and Sandgate are pure football clubs with unfettered access to the grounds all-year round.
There is just one setback. They have to pay about $20,000 to the Brisbane City Council for maintenance annually. It’s a hefty charge for a state league team.
Gold Coast teams, meanwhile, have their fields maintained by the Gold Coast City Council, a process that while keeping costs down doesn’t resolve issues of space.
Broadbeach senior men’s coach Beau Zorko said he believed the QAFL season was being brought forward a week, due to the addition of Maroochydore to the league. Round 1 is on March 28, pushing it further into cricket season.
The weekend of March 28 is already marked for grand finals for the Queensland Premier Cricket and Cricket Gold Coast competitions.
The host of the Kookaburra Cup is usually the first team to qualify for the cricket decider.
Zorko, whose side share Suburu Oval with cricket club
Broadbeach Robina, said the date changes made mapping out dates for important preseason matches even more difficult for a club that is traditionally left to try to play in Brisbane or head to the Sunshine Coast like it did this year.
Currently the Cats – who began their pre-season in mid-November – train in joggers and the ground’s centre wicket area is roped off.
“What it does is cause more of a headache,” Zorko said of the field issues.
“We don’t have the ground availability that they do in Brisbane. It’s not a problem we haven’t had to deal with before. Our issue on the Gold Coast is (the lack of) green space and the cricket community would feel the same.
“The silver lining is it has brought the football and cricket clubs closer together because they have to share the ground and get along.
“In a perfect world if we could potentially redevelop areas for more green space.
“We will have to look at venues like Robina and Coomera and build relationships with them because they are the two clubs who we could potentially use their ground space.”
Suns chairman Tony Cochrane highlighted the lack of footy ovals on the Coast in the Bulletin earlier this year.