Colonial Stadium

[fighting fury]

All you footy buffs, I pose 2 questions to you. 1.Do you think that Colonial Stadium could end up like the MCG, in the way the conditions are. A lot of heavy traffic runs through the MCG, being concerts as well as football. The grounds have taken a fair work out. AFL might do the same thing to Colonial. We've all read and heard about the hiccups of Colonial already, now that they are ironed out (maybe), what will the future hold? 2. Should footy stadiums be just for footy or as they are now, both?

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[Woofer]

1.They need to be careful with the amount of traffic they have but the real concern is having Storm play there with RL every second week.
2. Ideally yes, but footy can't afford to own their own ground anymore and will never again have full control over what the grounds are used for - they are just tenants. No coincidence the best surface belonged to a ground the AFL did have control over - Waverley Park

 

[The Old Dark Navy's]

1) Yes ff, it is more than likely that Colonial will end up catering for everything and anything. Grounds are run by people who do it for the money not the love of the game.

If a promoter is looking for a venue and Colonial passed it up and that event was to be staged elsewhere with success, Colonial would have burned it bridges if that event became an annual thing. It is not easy to move an event once it becomes familiar to the people who attend. Look at the outcry when the Grand Prix was moved from Adelaide to Melbourne. Huge backlash. Luckily the product was larger than the bad press. These stadiums need to get in first or they might never get in.

Colonial needs to wait though, they can't be totally sure everything is fine now.

2) We should ideally keep football stadiums for football only. The AFL have opened themselves up for lawsuits should players get injured by poor surfaces that have been used for other events. Luke O'Sullivan is a good example of this. Legal action is mentioned everytime a ruckman slips at a centre bounce!! My feeling is that the revenue these stadiums make from outside events combined with healthy insurance coverage means that they are prepared to risk the players safety and pay out the occasional lawsuit. If the payouts start to outweigh the revenue, then we'll see some action.

 

[Pessimistic]

Ther's no doubt that if they wanted to spend the dough, the surfaces would be near perfect - look at how they got organised for soccer etc at the olympic games.

Noe it is proven that it can be done - footy should insist on it being done.

 

[CJH]

There is a stadium in - I think - Holland which is an indoor venue in the same manner as Colonial, but with one fundamental differenence.

The surface is on these huge trays which, when not in use, roll out under the stands and into the carpark where it can get the requisite amount of sunlight.

There was an article in the Herald Sun recently that suggested that even after all the rain and sunshine we've had this spring and the lack of traffic on the surface, it is still not up to the level required or expected of a $450 million stadium. The article also suggested that the turf management company StrathAyr was also about to get the bullet from Colonial Stadium boss, Ian Collins.

Let's hope that the fact that not enough sunlight can get into the stadium does not turn out to be a fundamental design flaw that cripples the stadium

To answer the first question, unless the problem of light levels can be solved, Colonial will be consigned to having continually poor surfaces. With the potential for litigation hanging over the AFL for providing unsafe workplaces, this is not something that the AFL will find acceptable.

The solution to this problem should firstly be an engineering excercise rather than a management one. That is to say, Collo won't be able to step in and 'fix' it. Commission some engineers to come in and listen to possible solutions they come up with.

A solution to this problem is made all the more urgent with the arrival of the Melbourne Storm and the additional traffic that this will cause.

To answer the second question, in an ideal world the best situation would be to have purpose built football stadiums as happens in the U.S. with baseball / gridiron. This is not feasible in Australia though. The marketplace is not big enough to support this. The owners of Colonial Stadium could not afford to host just football there and need as many alternatives as possible.

After all, it does represent a large investment to the corporations who built it and they do wish to see a profit.


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[Same Old's]

CJH,

Your right about that stadium in Holland. They built it just before the Euro 2000 championships.

On the sunlight issue at "Colonial", I'm afraid that there is probably no solution to the problem. Unless they took the whole retractable roof off the stadium as well as the permanent roof as well(the one hanging directly over the stands. However that would be uneconomic.

Colonial is similar to the soccer stadium in Milan, the "San Siro". They also have big problems with their roof structure as they have to change their pitch every few months because of poor sunlight.

Colonial should have been designed differently then what it currently is.

It should be like the retractable roof baseball stadiums in the USA.


[This message has been edited by Same Old's (edited 18 November 2000).]

 

[fighting fury]

Yes CJH and Same Old, I guess your're right about the stadium's roof problem. It's a bit like 'who can build the best looking tower' amongst the architects. It might look great from the outside, but the bits and pieces could say otherwise as we have seen. Big boys building big toys and not seeing many consequences.

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