(As requested ... here is a transcript from my radio program on 3CR this morning. Is this the longest post in the history of BigFooty?)
M.C.G. upgrade
I s’pose I’d have to say it didn’t come as any great surprise when we read … a couple of weeks back … about a proposed $400 million revamp of the mighty Melbourne Cricket Ground. We knew the 2006 Commonwealth Games wouldn’t just go away. Short of some apocalyptic disaster, I think we’re pretty well stuck with the knowledge that we’ll have to cop the brouhaha that goes with such major international events. It won’t be on quite the same scale as the big athletics carnival they had in Sydney last year … BUT … you never know … Melbourne has a way of hyping everything up to the shit house. Even a tiddlywinks tournament in Melbourne would pull heads … put bums on seats … pack em to the rafters … we’re like that in Melbourne … we just LOVE our sport.
And I’m sure it’ll be a great couple of weeks … at least for those who don’t have to leave their homes because they’ve been kicked out to make way for sports-loving international back-packers. Or for those who don’t happen to be the poor homeless riff-raff moved on by the authorities to make the streets look pretty.
Yeah … it’ll be grouse.
Ozzie Ozzie Ozzie (Oy! Oy! Oy!)
But, of course … just like in Sydney … it won’t just be the couple of weeks of the actual Games that will be disruptive to our way of life. Cities pay a huge price for these mega sport-fests. The Olympics caused major problems for the disadvantaged people of Sydney years before the actual games. Everyone went mad renovating. Rents went through the roof. People on low incomes couldn’t go the pace and got turfed out.
And don’t kid yourself … it’ll happen in Melbourne. It may only be the Commonwealth Games … but remember … it’s in Melbourne … and Melbourne always does it bigger than anywhere else.
And the disruption is starting already.
Or soon, at least.
2001 will be the last year of the M.C.G. as we know it.
From 2002 it will become a construction site … Our pride and joy … the greatest sporting ground in Australia … will be a workplace for people in hard hats.
Basically … the proposal involves the destruction of over half of the present spectator accommodation at the ground. This includes the Ponsford or Western Stand, built in 1967 … the Olympic or Northern Stand built in 1956 … and, perhaps most controversially of all, the Members Pavilion, including the historic Long Room, built in 1927.
In place of these buildings will be one rather impressive looking structure in a similar style to the Great Southern Stand … The Great Southern Stand, completed in 1992, will, in fact, be the ONLY part of the existing stadium that will remain.
This new mega grandstand will cost a pretty penny … $400 million is the figure being bandied about. But, of course, these sorts of projects always seem to end up costing more than originally imagined … so, God knows what sort of extravagance we’re talking about here. Personally, I’d rather we paid off the third world’s debt … but no … we’re going to have a new grandstand at the G instead.
Play excerpt from “Leaps and Bounds”, Paul Kelly.
Way back in 1937, when they built the old Southern Stand … there was a clear need for a stadium that could hold the sort of crowds that were flocking to sport in Melbourne … particularly Australian Rules football, which became something of a religion in this city. It was all very tribal back then. Teams represented suburbs … like Collingwood, Richmond, Fitzroy … and the warring suburban tribes used to cram into suburban grounds with very primitive facilities, which were almost always packed to the rafters. There wasn’t much thought of comfort. You just crammed in there ... and tried to catch a glimpse of the Game.
But the M.C.G. was different. It had evolved a bit. There was more seating there than you’d find at other grounds. It was, after all, the home ground of the Melbourne Cricket Club Football Club … otherwise known simply as Melbourne … a club traditionally supported by the elite, the privileged, the well-off. They had their Members’ pavilion … the holy of holies … completely off-limits to the riff-raff, of course. Visible ties or cravats to be worn at all times, thank you.
And it was also … highly significantly … the place where the finals were played.
Mustn’t forget the cricket, of course. It was … after all … the Melbourne CRICKET ground. And the flannelled fools could pull a crowd in those days.
But it was the footy finals that really packed em in … then and now … particularly the Grand Final. So much so that lock-outs were becoming normal on Grand Final day. There was no pre-booking of tickets in those days … you just lined up outside the ground on the day. If you got there early enough you got in … simple. No scalpers. No ads in the paper. No corporate giveaways.
But there was a problem … the Game had got too popular. And so … on Grand Final day there was the problem of not enough room.
So, in 1937 they built the Southern Stand … thinking they were solving, for all time, the problem of lock-outs on Grand Final day.
But the 1937 Grand Final was … you guessed it … a lock-out. Collingwood versus Geelong … a crowd of 88,540 … 10,000 latecomers turned away … spectators sitting precariously between the fence and the boundary line …
The lesson was clear … you build a bigger stadium … and the crowds just get bigger to fill up the available space … a bit like freeways, I s’pose. You build more freeways … so more people drive cars.
But the Southern Stand … the old Southern Stand, that is … served its purpose. It actually increased the spectator capacity of the M.C.G. It meant … quite simply … that more people could get the chance to see the really big games … in particular, the biggest of them all … the Grand Final.
Another interesting point about the old Southern Stand was that it was built … not for the M.C.C. members in their visible ties and cravats … they had their pavilion, after all … and a nice cosy one it was … built in 1927 and still going strong ... for the moment at least.
The old Southern Stand was built for the general public. No corporate boxes. No restricted access. It was a public grandstand. And a massive one at that … extending half-way around the ground. It was a monument to the sporting public of Australia’s most sport-oriented city.
But it wasn’t enough. The post war immigration boom saw to that. Bigger population … bigger crowds at the footy … many of the new migrants took to the Australian game …
But it was the big athletics carnival of 1956 that prompted the next big upgrade of the G. An impressive new grandstand … it actually had seats on the roof … creating another tier … very radical for its time. The Olympic Stand was state-of-the-art stuff.
And again … the M.C.G. Trust thought they’d solved the problem of Grand Final lock-outs.
How wrong they were. The 1956 Grand Final produced a near riot. An unprecedented 115,802 turned up to watch the Melbourne Cricket Club Football Club, cheered on by the men in visible ties and cravats, inflict a crushing defeat on the more proletarian Collingwood tribe.
After the gates were locked … mobs of irate supporters circled the ground looking for a way in. One group managed to fight their way in when a gate was opened to let the pre-game marching band in. It was pandemonium. People in the crowd were fainting and being crushed against fences. As usual there were empty seats in the Members pavilion. That is, until certain members of the proletarian hordes decided that it was time the men in the visible ties and cravats shared their space with the plebs. So before long, all the empty seats in the Members were full. Power to the riff-raff …
The 1956 Grand Final was the last time they let people just queue up on the day. From now on, Grand Finals would be ticketed affairs. And since that time … tickets just seem to have gotten scarcer and scarcer.
That record crowd of 115, 802 stood for 14 years … By the time it was eclipsed … another new stand had been built … behind the Western goal … it became known as the Ponsford Stand. Again the M.C.G. capacity was increased … and again the crowds just increased to fill up the space. But in 1970 … when Carlton stole that famous premiership from Collingwood … over 120,000 people got to see it. Admittedly many of those probably didn’t see much … and it must have been pretty uncomfortable in the standing room areas … and there were still quite large standing room areas at the M.C.G. in those days …
There’s all sorts of stories about drunken men urinating where they stood rather than battle their way through the crowd to get to a toilet … such is the folklore of the halcyon days of footy. You could take an esky of beer … full strength of course … and get quite legless … And there was always a fight going on somewhere … and … yeah …
But at least you could get in … It wasn’t that hard. If you were a member of one of the clubs competing you were a pretty strong chance of getting a ticket.
Well … the completion of the Ponsford Stand in 1967 was the last major upgrade that the M.C.G. went through until 1990.When the Pies finally cracked it for a Premiership the Southern Stand was still there … but there was something wrong … the roof was missing. The building itself was falling down … some sort of structural problem apparently … and they were planning to put the poor thing out of its misery.
In season 1991 the southern side of the G was a hard-hat zone. They even had to play the Grand Final at Waverley.
But by 1992 they’d built the most imposing sporting structure ever seen in Australia …
The Great Southern Stand completely took my breath away the first time I saw it. What an amazing structure.
It’s size has to be seen to be believed. You’d think a stand that size would have finally solved the problem of accommodating the crowds that wanted to go to the Grand Final …
But, strangely, that’s not the case. Although the Great Southern Stand dwarfs the other stands at the M.C.G., it’s actual spectator capacity is quite modest. And the M.C.G. now holds a lot less people than it did in 1970. I guess blokes don’t like pissing where they stand these days. They’re more civilised. In fact … modern crowds have become quite pampered … Standing room? What’s that?
But the biggest reason why the Great Southern Stand doesn’t hold as many people as it could is because so much of it is taken up with corporate boxes.
So, the building of the Great Southern Stand was the first upgrade in the M.C.G.’s history that actually resulted in the spectator accommodation decreasing.
And although the proposed new stand is going to be of comparable size to the Great Southern Stand … and will be easily much more imposing a sight than the three stands that it’s gunna replace … the spectator capacity at the ground will not be any greater than it is now.
So, once again we’re seeing an upgrade that’s not actually gunna make it possible for more people to fit in. Sure, it’ll be a bit more comfortable that the Olympic or the Ponsford stands. But, for all its grandiose dimensions … not to mention its $400 million price-tag … its not gunna hold any more people.
Let’s face it … this upgrade is not gunna democratise the footy. Not at all. This is an elitist upgrade. This will … in fact … make it harder … certainly a lot more expensive … for the riff-raff to attend the footy.
Already we’ve got the A.F.L. talking about a $2 levy on the general admission price to pay for their contribution to the cost of the thing. But don’t expect it to end there.
We’re not talking about general admission seating for the plebs here. We’re talking about reserved seating at the very least. I think it’s a pretty fair bet that seats in this whizz-bang new grandstand are gunna be a lot more expensive than what we’re used to … I’d just about bet my bottom dollar on that.
And, of course, a lot of the seats won’t be available to the general public anyway. The men in the ties and visible cravats have to be looked after too, you know. And they’ll be paying a lot more for their memberships, it would seem. The M.C.C. is gunna have to cough up big bucks for their share of this project … and that’s only gunna come from their members.
After all. There’s $400 million involved here … at least. And that’s gotta come from somewhere. The Federal Government will provide some of it … through the Commonwealth Games Authority.
But ultimately … the sports fan will pay … through a combination of taxes and increased admission and/or seating costs.
It’s been happening already. Have you noticed how much more expensive and elitist the footy has become since they built the Great Southern Stand. No … you’re not imagining it.
And most of the Great Southern is set aside for A.F.L. Members. You get this ridiculous situation … whenever you get a crowd of say, 65 or 70,000 … where you’ve got the general public crammed in like sardines at one end of the stand … while you could fire a gun through the A.F.L. Members’ and not hit anyone.
Elitism.
Y’know … they call the M.C.G. the “People’s Ground” … or at least their spin doctors do.
But really … when you consider all the restricted areas that exist … all very hierarchical, too, I might add …
You’ve got the M.C.C. Members for the men in visible ties and cravats. You’ve got your AFL members. Your corporate boxes. Special areas for the media. Then you’ve got your reserved seating areas. Then your general admission seating and your bloody standing room.
Nothing quite illustrates the class divisions in Melbourne society quite like a day at the M.C.G. And if you think the class thing is a bit of a furphy … try sitting in an area other than the one you’ve got a ticket for … and watch the coated official descend upon you.
------------------
**floreat pica**
M.C.G. upgrade
I s’pose I’d have to say it didn’t come as any great surprise when we read … a couple of weeks back … about a proposed $400 million revamp of the mighty Melbourne Cricket Ground. We knew the 2006 Commonwealth Games wouldn’t just go away. Short of some apocalyptic disaster, I think we’re pretty well stuck with the knowledge that we’ll have to cop the brouhaha that goes with such major international events. It won’t be on quite the same scale as the big athletics carnival they had in Sydney last year … BUT … you never know … Melbourne has a way of hyping everything up to the shit house. Even a tiddlywinks tournament in Melbourne would pull heads … put bums on seats … pack em to the rafters … we’re like that in Melbourne … we just LOVE our sport.
And I’m sure it’ll be a great couple of weeks … at least for those who don’t have to leave their homes because they’ve been kicked out to make way for sports-loving international back-packers. Or for those who don’t happen to be the poor homeless riff-raff moved on by the authorities to make the streets look pretty.
Yeah … it’ll be grouse.
Ozzie Ozzie Ozzie (Oy! Oy! Oy!)
But, of course … just like in Sydney … it won’t just be the couple of weeks of the actual Games that will be disruptive to our way of life. Cities pay a huge price for these mega sport-fests. The Olympics caused major problems for the disadvantaged people of Sydney years before the actual games. Everyone went mad renovating. Rents went through the roof. People on low incomes couldn’t go the pace and got turfed out.
And don’t kid yourself … it’ll happen in Melbourne. It may only be the Commonwealth Games … but remember … it’s in Melbourne … and Melbourne always does it bigger than anywhere else.
And the disruption is starting already.
Or soon, at least.
2001 will be the last year of the M.C.G. as we know it.
From 2002 it will become a construction site … Our pride and joy … the greatest sporting ground in Australia … will be a workplace for people in hard hats.
Basically … the proposal involves the destruction of over half of the present spectator accommodation at the ground. This includes the Ponsford or Western Stand, built in 1967 … the Olympic or Northern Stand built in 1956 … and, perhaps most controversially of all, the Members Pavilion, including the historic Long Room, built in 1927.
In place of these buildings will be one rather impressive looking structure in a similar style to the Great Southern Stand … The Great Southern Stand, completed in 1992, will, in fact, be the ONLY part of the existing stadium that will remain.
This new mega grandstand will cost a pretty penny … $400 million is the figure being bandied about. But, of course, these sorts of projects always seem to end up costing more than originally imagined … so, God knows what sort of extravagance we’re talking about here. Personally, I’d rather we paid off the third world’s debt … but no … we’re going to have a new grandstand at the G instead.
Play excerpt from “Leaps and Bounds”, Paul Kelly.
Way back in 1937, when they built the old Southern Stand … there was a clear need for a stadium that could hold the sort of crowds that were flocking to sport in Melbourne … particularly Australian Rules football, which became something of a religion in this city. It was all very tribal back then. Teams represented suburbs … like Collingwood, Richmond, Fitzroy … and the warring suburban tribes used to cram into suburban grounds with very primitive facilities, which were almost always packed to the rafters. There wasn’t much thought of comfort. You just crammed in there ... and tried to catch a glimpse of the Game.
But the M.C.G. was different. It had evolved a bit. There was more seating there than you’d find at other grounds. It was, after all, the home ground of the Melbourne Cricket Club Football Club … otherwise known simply as Melbourne … a club traditionally supported by the elite, the privileged, the well-off. They had their Members’ pavilion … the holy of holies … completely off-limits to the riff-raff, of course. Visible ties or cravats to be worn at all times, thank you.
And it was also … highly significantly … the place where the finals were played.
Mustn’t forget the cricket, of course. It was … after all … the Melbourne CRICKET ground. And the flannelled fools could pull a crowd in those days.
But it was the footy finals that really packed em in … then and now … particularly the Grand Final. So much so that lock-outs were becoming normal on Grand Final day. There was no pre-booking of tickets in those days … you just lined up outside the ground on the day. If you got there early enough you got in … simple. No scalpers. No ads in the paper. No corporate giveaways.
But there was a problem … the Game had got too popular. And so … on Grand Final day there was the problem of not enough room.
So, in 1937 they built the Southern Stand … thinking they were solving, for all time, the problem of lock-outs on Grand Final day.
But the 1937 Grand Final was … you guessed it … a lock-out. Collingwood versus Geelong … a crowd of 88,540 … 10,000 latecomers turned away … spectators sitting precariously between the fence and the boundary line …
The lesson was clear … you build a bigger stadium … and the crowds just get bigger to fill up the available space … a bit like freeways, I s’pose. You build more freeways … so more people drive cars.
But the Southern Stand … the old Southern Stand, that is … served its purpose. It actually increased the spectator capacity of the M.C.G. It meant … quite simply … that more people could get the chance to see the really big games … in particular, the biggest of them all … the Grand Final.
Another interesting point about the old Southern Stand was that it was built … not for the M.C.C. members in their visible ties and cravats … they had their pavilion, after all … and a nice cosy one it was … built in 1927 and still going strong ... for the moment at least.
The old Southern Stand was built for the general public. No corporate boxes. No restricted access. It was a public grandstand. And a massive one at that … extending half-way around the ground. It was a monument to the sporting public of Australia’s most sport-oriented city.
But it wasn’t enough. The post war immigration boom saw to that. Bigger population … bigger crowds at the footy … many of the new migrants took to the Australian game …
But it was the big athletics carnival of 1956 that prompted the next big upgrade of the G. An impressive new grandstand … it actually had seats on the roof … creating another tier … very radical for its time. The Olympic Stand was state-of-the-art stuff.
And again … the M.C.G. Trust thought they’d solved the problem of Grand Final lock-outs.
How wrong they were. The 1956 Grand Final produced a near riot. An unprecedented 115,802 turned up to watch the Melbourne Cricket Club Football Club, cheered on by the men in visible ties and cravats, inflict a crushing defeat on the more proletarian Collingwood tribe.
After the gates were locked … mobs of irate supporters circled the ground looking for a way in. One group managed to fight their way in when a gate was opened to let the pre-game marching band in. It was pandemonium. People in the crowd were fainting and being crushed against fences. As usual there were empty seats in the Members pavilion. That is, until certain members of the proletarian hordes decided that it was time the men in the visible ties and cravats shared their space with the plebs. So before long, all the empty seats in the Members were full. Power to the riff-raff …
The 1956 Grand Final was the last time they let people just queue up on the day. From now on, Grand Finals would be ticketed affairs. And since that time … tickets just seem to have gotten scarcer and scarcer.
That record crowd of 115, 802 stood for 14 years … By the time it was eclipsed … another new stand had been built … behind the Western goal … it became known as the Ponsford Stand. Again the M.C.G. capacity was increased … and again the crowds just increased to fill up the space. But in 1970 … when Carlton stole that famous premiership from Collingwood … over 120,000 people got to see it. Admittedly many of those probably didn’t see much … and it must have been pretty uncomfortable in the standing room areas … and there were still quite large standing room areas at the M.C.G. in those days …
There’s all sorts of stories about drunken men urinating where they stood rather than battle their way through the crowd to get to a toilet … such is the folklore of the halcyon days of footy. You could take an esky of beer … full strength of course … and get quite legless … And there was always a fight going on somewhere … and … yeah …
But at least you could get in … It wasn’t that hard. If you were a member of one of the clubs competing you were a pretty strong chance of getting a ticket.
Well … the completion of the Ponsford Stand in 1967 was the last major upgrade that the M.C.G. went through until 1990.When the Pies finally cracked it for a Premiership the Southern Stand was still there … but there was something wrong … the roof was missing. The building itself was falling down … some sort of structural problem apparently … and they were planning to put the poor thing out of its misery.
In season 1991 the southern side of the G was a hard-hat zone. They even had to play the Grand Final at Waverley.
But by 1992 they’d built the most imposing sporting structure ever seen in Australia …
The Great Southern Stand completely took my breath away the first time I saw it. What an amazing structure.
It’s size has to be seen to be believed. You’d think a stand that size would have finally solved the problem of accommodating the crowds that wanted to go to the Grand Final …
But, strangely, that’s not the case. Although the Great Southern Stand dwarfs the other stands at the M.C.G., it’s actual spectator capacity is quite modest. And the M.C.G. now holds a lot less people than it did in 1970. I guess blokes don’t like pissing where they stand these days. They’re more civilised. In fact … modern crowds have become quite pampered … Standing room? What’s that?
But the biggest reason why the Great Southern Stand doesn’t hold as many people as it could is because so much of it is taken up with corporate boxes.
So, the building of the Great Southern Stand was the first upgrade in the M.C.G.’s history that actually resulted in the spectator accommodation decreasing.
And although the proposed new stand is going to be of comparable size to the Great Southern Stand … and will be easily much more imposing a sight than the three stands that it’s gunna replace … the spectator capacity at the ground will not be any greater than it is now.
So, once again we’re seeing an upgrade that’s not actually gunna make it possible for more people to fit in. Sure, it’ll be a bit more comfortable that the Olympic or the Ponsford stands. But, for all its grandiose dimensions … not to mention its $400 million price-tag … its not gunna hold any more people.
Let’s face it … this upgrade is not gunna democratise the footy. Not at all. This is an elitist upgrade. This will … in fact … make it harder … certainly a lot more expensive … for the riff-raff to attend the footy.
Already we’ve got the A.F.L. talking about a $2 levy on the general admission price to pay for their contribution to the cost of the thing. But don’t expect it to end there.
We’re not talking about general admission seating for the plebs here. We’re talking about reserved seating at the very least. I think it’s a pretty fair bet that seats in this whizz-bang new grandstand are gunna be a lot more expensive than what we’re used to … I’d just about bet my bottom dollar on that.
And, of course, a lot of the seats won’t be available to the general public anyway. The men in the ties and visible cravats have to be looked after too, you know. And they’ll be paying a lot more for their memberships, it would seem. The M.C.C. is gunna have to cough up big bucks for their share of this project … and that’s only gunna come from their members.
After all. There’s $400 million involved here … at least. And that’s gotta come from somewhere. The Federal Government will provide some of it … through the Commonwealth Games Authority.
But ultimately … the sports fan will pay … through a combination of taxes and increased admission and/or seating costs.
It’s been happening already. Have you noticed how much more expensive and elitist the footy has become since they built the Great Southern Stand. No … you’re not imagining it.
And most of the Great Southern is set aside for A.F.L. Members. You get this ridiculous situation … whenever you get a crowd of say, 65 or 70,000 … where you’ve got the general public crammed in like sardines at one end of the stand … while you could fire a gun through the A.F.L. Members’ and not hit anyone.
Elitism.
Y’know … they call the M.C.G. the “People’s Ground” … or at least their spin doctors do.
But really … when you consider all the restricted areas that exist … all very hierarchical, too, I might add …
You’ve got the M.C.C. Members for the men in visible ties and cravats. You’ve got your AFL members. Your corporate boxes. Special areas for the media. Then you’ve got your reserved seating areas. Then your general admission seating and your bloody standing room.
Nothing quite illustrates the class divisions in Melbourne society quite like a day at the M.C.G. And if you think the class thing is a bit of a furphy … try sitting in an area other than the one you’ve got a ticket for … and watch the coated official descend upon you.
------------------
**floreat pica**
