NRL needs venues in Sydney's sporting patchwork quilt

It’sbeen announced that the Sydney Cricket Ground will be upgraded, with funding from the Australian Federal Government of $50 million, the New South Wales State Government of $86 million, and the SGC Trust spending $50 million.

This will see the venue’s capacity boosted from 45,758 to 48,000.

Wait, what? That works out to be just under $83,000 per additional seat! How bloody ridiculous.

It makes me think about the scattergun approach rugby league has taken to upgrading its own facilities. So many millions of dollars have been wasted on so many different venues, none of which are anywhere near up to the standard they should be.

There is no long-term strategy in regards to where the NRL wants to permanently base teams in Sydney. There is no long-term plan for which venues will get funding to becomes the world-class facilities that the game needs. The sad thing is, rugby league has no one to blame but itself.

Right now only the Sydney Roosters, Parramatta Eels and Penrith Panthers have permanent, long-term home stadiums.

The West Tigers and St George-Illawarra Dragons have at least two ‘home’ stadiums, as well as moving bigger games to ANZ Stadium or the Sydney Football Stadium.

The Canterbury Bulldogs currently play out of ANZ Stadium, but recently opened a taxpayer funded training facility at the dilapidated Belmore Oval. The club has said they want to get back up to NRL standards again, courtesy of the taxpayer, as if anyone wants to travel to Belmore to watch games.

The Manly Sea Eagles want funding to upgrade their stadium, though it’s impossible to get to and has no parking. They have talked about moving the club if they don’t get a stadium upgrade.

Then you have the poor old Cronulla Sharks who are so busy servicing debt that they don’t know how long they will be around, let alone if they will be playing at Shark Park long term.

It is one great big mess and it doesn’t have to be that way.

I would like to see the NRL sit down and formulate a long-term strategy for where it wants every NRL club playing in Sydney, not just over the next few seasons, but 20 years from now.

They need to look at fully servicing the Campbelltown area with a full time team. They need to look at what venues they want to invest their product in, and in turn look at getting funding for those venues, so that rugby league fans can attend games at stadiums that are comfortable and give the best spectator experience.

The NRL should look to team up with Football Federation Australia and the Australian Rugby Union, and all three sports sit down and talk about strategic plans for facilities, from the biggest stadiums down to local playing fields.

All three sports require a rectangular field. The goal posts and field markings change, but that is it. Across all three sports, spectators and players require the exact same things.

Being able to lobby the government for funding as a group, and with a long-term strategy, would benefit all three sports. They are all trying to target the same areas, but without a coordinated approach. That makes it very difficult to get anything done.

I would like to see Sydney end up with a rectangular stadium with a capacity of between 35-40,000, based near the geographical centre.

To me, Parramatta Stadium ticks a lot of boxes and gives you a great base to build upon. With the right amount of commitment from three sports, a number of full time tenants and the right amount of funding, you could turn Parramatta Stadium into a smaller version of Suncorp Stadium in Brisbane.

Imagine a 35,000 seat version of Suncorp based at Parramatta. It would become the home of the Parramatta Eels and Canterbury Bulldogs in the NRL, as well as being home to a western Sydney A-League team, meaning it would be used 12 months of the year.

This venue would be the perfect size to host rugby league internationals, as well as bigger games involving western Sydney teams such as the Wests Tigers and Penrith Panthers. It could host smaller football and rugby union internationals as well.

The alternative is to look at building a brand new stadium, that would need a bigger commitment from all three sports and would probably require the game to abandon a few venues around Sydney.

That would see a stadium built at Homebush Bay, perhaps, with the Canterbury Bulldogs and South Sydney Rabbitohs committing to the venue, a promise that the Parramatta Eels would play their biggest games at this stadium, and a similar commitment from the Dragons and the Tigers (who would have to finally give up Leichhardt Oval and commit to Campbelltown and the new stadium).

This will all horrify the traditionalists, but I don’t really care. Right now we are seeing so many millons of taxpayer money being thrown away on venues that, even after having tens of millions spent on them, are still not up to any reasonable standard.

Plenty of people claim that Sydney league teams don’t get huge crowds because they are not marketed well. That is a misconception.These days all venues are in competition with HD TV and a busier lifestyle. League is up against television coverage, your own lounge chair, beers from your own fridge and pizza.

To get people to go to the football, and come back time and time again, you have to provide a very good experience. It is not good enough any more to offer a grass hill at an out of the way suburban ground with no parking what so ever. You can’t ask a supporter to invest money in a night out to watch your team play, and then offer them a poor facility.

When you look at stadiums in other cities, Sydney is locked in a completely different era. A stadium such as Suncorp, Skilled Park on the Gold Coast, or AAMI Park in Melbourne, are so good that fans attending games just want to come back and watch anything at the stadium, whichever sport it is.

There are Super League teams in England with stadiums better than those at Manly, Cronulla, Balmain, St George and Penrith. St Helens has just completed construction on a new venue, and while it only has a capacity of 18,000, it leaves anything in the aforementioned areas for dead.

If rugby league in Sydney wants to provide a good enough experience to keep fans coming back, it will need to provide venues that are up to today’s standards. For all the talk about how great traditional old venues are, the fact is that newer stadiums go beyond drawing in just the die hard fans, and because of that they draw bigger attendances.

Not long ago rugby league used to have a match of the round that it would hold at the SCG. This allowed people to go to a top-class venue with a big capacity. It allowed as many people as possible to attend a big game in the most comfortable environment possible.

This should be what is provided every single week to Sydney NRL fans. We need to get funding for venues, but we need to concentrate that funding into a select few, not throw money at old ruins so we can play the occasional game at grounds our parents used to go to. Time moves on…

If the SCG can spend $186 million to add a few extra seats, I don’t think it is beyond reason to think that league, football and union could get together the money to have a rectangular football stadium in the geographical heart of Sydney that would become the home of a number of different clubs as well as hosting internationals.

Keep in mind that for the $186 million upgrade the SCG will undergo for cricket and AFL alone, you could have constructed Skilled Stadium on the Gold Coast and had a spare $26 million. I’m sure that would be enough to buy a few extra seats as well.