The footballers who can’t access their changerooms: storm damage makes it unsafe to use grandstand
A SUBURBAN football club may not be able to access its changerooms this coming SANFL season due to storm damage at its home-ground grandstands — and 500 seats may also need to be bulldozed.
GLENELG Football Club may not be able to access its changerooms this coming SANFL season because of storm damage to one of the Bay oval grandstands.
The Tigers have not used the HY Sparks Stand since a December storm blew off its roof, and have been told the building is unsafe and needs to be structurally assessed.
Holdfast Bay Council, which owns the oval, has not ruled out the 500-seat stand needing to be bulldozed and expects to receive a report from the insurer’s engineer within about a week.
The club has already moved its gymnasium into a function room, while its coaches and timekeepers will likely sit in the Edward Rix Stand on matchdays.
Tigers president Nick Chigwidden said the club was already investigating alternative options for changerooms ahead of its round one home clash with Port Adelaide on Friday, April 7.
“Obviously, we still want to be playing at Glenelg Oval so we’ll make sure we can do that but we need to work with all parties to see what we can do pretty quickly,” Chigwidden said.
“As a footy club, what we’ve got to be planning for is at least half the season, maybe even the whole season that we wouldn’t be using that (stand).
“It’s going to be a building site while they do the roof and all that.
“The engineers are not being too committal at the moment but I would say it’s highly, highly unlikely that we’d be in there by the first game.”
Glenelg Oval has been hosting cricket matches since the storm, including a Sheffield Shield match last week.
But Chigwidden said the ground’s cricket changerooms were too small for a football team.
“We’re confident we can come up with some good options so it won’t be second-rate,” he said.
“But we need to work with the council and insurance company to make sure we can get that happening within the time frames, which are pretty tight.
Chigwidden did not expect the stand’s unavailability to reduce crowd sizes.
“We’ve got the big stand and even without the (HY Sparks) stand, we can fit good numbers.”
The CoastCity Weekly asked Holdfast Bay Council whether the stand would need to be bulldozed.
In an emailed statement, Mayor Stephen Patterson said the structural engineer’s findings would largely determine what the council did next.
“Safety is clearly the priority,” Patterson said.
“It’s too early to guess at the extent of potential repair or replacement costs and what will or won’t be covered by insurance.
“We have provided portable change rooms to assist cricketers during the summer season and these will stay in place to assist footy players if necessary.”