Is the AFL grabbing Olympic Park?

[gweeds]

A new base for Demons?
Exclusive
By Caroline Wilson
March 2, 2005

The Melbourne Football Club's dream of celebrating its 150th birthday at a permanent home near the MCG has moved closer to reality with the revelation that the Demons have found a landlord in a planned $100-million, 20,000-seat stadium and training facility at Olympic Park.

The stadium - seemingly abandoned by the Victorian Government following the loss of the rugby Super 14 licence to Perth last year - could be resurrected within three months by Sports Minister Justin Madden.

The State Government looks set to announce by May that it will relaunch the major project. The move, a fillip for the Olympic Park precinct, would resolve the Demons' search for a permanent home and see Melbourne and Collingwood share a new training ground - a first for the AFL.

In a series of ramifications for sport and major events around the city the new stadium would also see:

· Collingwood's training ground moved along Swan Street, potentially to the Olympic Park athletic track

· The Magpies and the Demons to share the AFL-sized training facility.

· Melbourne Storm, Melbourne Victory and the Melbourne Football Club to open for business as early as November 2007 with commercial premises and merchandising stores fronting Swan Street.

· Those offices linked to the new stadium, which would initially boast a seating capacity of 20,000 with Melbourne Victory to play 14 games there each season and Melbourne Storm 12 matches a year.

· The Demons sharing indoor training facilities such as a gymnasium and swimming pool with the rugby league and soccer clubs, while having separate rooms for its players ideally linked to the training ground.

· Melbourne, which in 2000 took over part of the AFL's lease at the MCG, released as a sub-tenant but insisting on a more permanent ground agreement with the stadium - part of wider and renewed fixturing talks with the MCC and MCG Trust.

· The Melbourne Tigers basketball team offered administrative and training headquarters at the new Swan Street stadium.

The government is understood to have warmed to the prospect of the stadium, despite losing the rugby licence, largely due to the prospect of attracting major soccer, rugby and rugby league support along with other major events to the precinct. It sees a 20,000-seat facility as more economic for certain events than the significantly larger Telstra Dome.

While construction could not start on the stadium - likely to be situated in the vicinity of the Olympic Park Sports Medicine Centre - until after the 2006 Commonwealth Games, the indications are that the Demons' new home could be completed in time for the 2008 pre-season.

"We have made it clear we want to have new headquarters in place by November 2007," said Melbourne chief executive Steve Harris. "That is the official start of our 150th year and a key pillar in our business and fund-raising strategy."

Collingwood chief executive Greg Swann said the Magpies would not object to a new outdoor facility on the proviso it remained in the vicinity of the Lexus Centre. He said the club had no significant issue with sharing a major ground with Melbourne.

Melbourne Storm chief executive Brian Waldron said: "One of Melbourne's major icons is sport and the prospect of three clubs from three different codes, all named Melbourne, is obviously exciting.

"There's enormous cost savings as well as synergies we can work on if we shared commercial facilities along Swan Street."

The Demons have heads of agreement in place with the Melbourne Olympic Park Trust to investigate the possibility of both shared and individual facilities but the trust's interim chief executive Sue Nattrass confirmed that both Melbourne and Collingwood had indicated a willingness to share an outdoor AFL-sized training ground, likely to be situated between the Lexus Centre and the new stadium.

"There is no precinct like this in the world," said Nattrass, "when you consider the Arts Centre, the Botanical Gardens, the Music Bowl, Olympic Park, the tennis centre leading to the MCG - it is clear this is a wonderful place for a new stadium and we've still got Melbourne Storm and Melbourne Victory to look after."

Nattrass said she was "hopeful" the government would re-launch the project and that it would certainly be situated on the south side of Swan Street.

I am not clear. Is Collingwood and Melbourne going to use a revamped Olympic Park as a training facility while maintaining a rectangular rugby/football shape?

[stinger]

It sounds like their will be a rectangular stadium built for Victory and the storm. Melbourne Demons will use Collingwoods training facilities. While Victory, the demons and the storm will all share adminstrative space.

[Victory_4_all_Victorians]

i hope so, caroline wilison is a slut , rooting all the AFL players.

Long live Football death to the AFL

[ONYX]

Sounds to me like they want to make another bloody oval......Bad idea!!! That's what i read out of that article anyway! AFL can get thier dirty little mitts off Olympic park, they have plenty of venues already, and The Storm and Football are getting the bum steer from a biased minister!!

EDIT: Seems my reply was a little hasty, hopefully stingers post is more to the truth

[Champagne Football]

AFL-sized training facility

Does this mean the playing field (match practice), or gym, etc, suitable for an AFL size squad of 40? (In the first sentence of the article it says "stadium and training facility", so to me they are separate entities.)

If the actual stadium they are talking about is for the sports that use rectangular playing fields only, then this is great news!

[Gooners Away]

if you read the article closely you get the impression that a new rectangular stadium will be built for MVFC and melb storm, and then a seperate gAyFL sized training oval for demons and magpies and then all codes sharing the admin offices/facilities.

this would work out well for us, as once melb storm fold (which will happen once their backers get fed up of taking massive losses year in year out), then we'll have this 20,000 capacity stadium all to ourselves.

I was hoping for more like 25,000 but beggers cant be choosers.

and i agree... caroline wilson is a slut and she can f*ck off

[ONYX]

For non melbournites like me, who exactly is Caroline Wilson?

[Gooners Away]

a bitch AwFuL journo

typical ignorant sl*t who knows nothing about the world game and thinks arse grabbing bum sniffing wanker AFL is a mans game.

[ONYX]

any examples of her work?...besides what i just read

[Gooners Away]

she was on a show called talking footy (what a horrible abuse of the word footy)

also wrote for the age i think

[Hugie]

For non melbournites like me, who exactly is Caroline Wilson?

For a slightly less biased opinion (sorry Gooners) Caroline Wilson is one of the few female AFL reporters in Melbourne. She is very, very opinionated about her sport and has gotten on the wrong side of many people a) because she's a woman telling men how to play a male sport and b) because she is willing to state what her opinion is, no holds barred! I have disagreed with her many times but I must admit her strength in her opinion is something that I hope to have if I ever make it into journalism.

As far as I know she doesn't sleep with footballers...but then who does know?

[gweeds]

and this is one of her common opinions:

Now development is a key issue facing the game, and we have to get our young boys, people like me who are true believers in the code, to play Aussie Rules football, because we don't want them playing soccer or basketball or rugby league, or tennis or golf, we want them having a wide range of sports but we want them choosing footy because we need footy players, we need good players.

I think her father I think was the president of Richmond AFL in the 1980's

[ONYX]

All i can say to her is GOOD LUCK, The number of FOOTBALL players far outnumbers the number of Aussie Rules players at junior levels, and this is with complete saturation in the media of the AFL, and absolute shit state of football in this country.

The problem we have is loosing our youngsters overseas or worse to other codes when they get to 16 and realise there's no opportunities for them in this country. Hopefully now that the FFA has thier shit together (seemingly) and the advent of the A-League will prevent this!

PS i have seen her on the telly before....she has a very abraisive personality...prolly cos she's so ugly :p

[Bendigo Blue]

if you read the article closely you get the impression that a new rectangular stadium will be built for MVFC and melb storm, and then a seperate gAyFL sized training oval for demons and magpies and then all codes sharing the admin offices/facilities.

Sounds great to me. It does shit me that the AFL has to get involved for anything to be taken seriously in this state, but it reads as though there would be benefits for MVFC in this plan.

[Clint]

Sounds great to me. It does shit me that the AFL has to get involved for anything to be taken seriously in this state, but it reads as thought there would be benefits for MVFC in this plan.

Agree. Madden's attitude - Shirk the issue or tell the Storm and Victory to 'fuck off' until his AFL mates come along.