Entitled outrage over Unley Oval plans deserves to be ignored | David Penberthy

Forget the troubles of Ukraine or the Middle East. This loud and hysterical NIMBY minority have Unley Oval at the top of their list, writes David Penberthy.

There are a lot of serious problems in the world today. Ukraine. The Middle East. The proposed construction of a permanent fence at Unley Oval.

I’ll declare my bias at the outset. I am a Sturt supporter. I have been going to the Unley Oval since the 1970s, back in the days when it was always closed to the public, save for match day when you had to pay your way to get in.

When Sturt briefly left their home ground for the Adelaide Oval in the early 1980s and returned to Unley in 1988, it was decreed that the oval should remain open to the locals, save for the 10 afternoons a year when the men’s senior team plays there. It is also off limits two or three times a year for AFLW games.

Other than that, it is open to the public at all times.

You can even walk your dog there when the players are training.

The exact same arrangements will remain in place if Unley Council goes ahead with its feasibility study into the construction of a permanent fence.

Cue the howls of bourgeois outrage.

There are some people in this seriously affluent part of Adelaide who have lost all perspective when it comes to what is such a demonstrably innocuous issue.

As things currently stand, the oval is more than 50 per cent fenced off anyway, the southern end at the bowls club, the western side by the grandstands.

The plan is to come up with an aesthetically pleasing fence that fits the Federation feel of the ground and its environs.

The way some people are carrying on, you’d think Donald Trump held a MAGA rally outside the Jack Oatey Stand promising to build a great wall along Frederick St and Langham Tce to keep any rogue Mexicans at bay.

Indeed, some of the members of the residents action group have stated at public meetings that they will not tolerate the construction of “Yatala-style” fencing around the perimeter of the oval.

Fans during a Carlton Blues AFL training session at Unley Oval. Picture: Sarah Reed/AFL Photos via Getty Images

A view of Unley Oval. Picture: Facebook.

This being Unley, I doubt that razor wire is quite what they have got in mind.

The impetus for the proposal has not even emanated from the Sturt Football Club, even though the club is a very interested party, having wasted more than $1 million erecting ugly, temporary match day fencing which costs $30,000 a time to put up.

Rather, the process is being led by Unley Council, which wants to tidy the thing up once and for all and also have the option of holding other events such as fetes and food and wine fairs inside the ground.

There is nothing in the council’s plan that involves an expansion of the football club’s use of the ground. Indeed the terms of the club’s use of the oval state that it can only use the oval for 500 hours per annum, which is less than 6 per cent of the year.

Even though the SFC is not leading the charge to erect the fence, some people have been ringing its female office staff and screaming abuse down the phone.

These people, whoever they are, need to get a life.

The club has been derided as being “profit-driven” even though, like all SANFL clubs, it is constituted as a not-for-profit, and whatever so-called “profit” it makes is reinvested in grassroots footy for young men and women and facilities which everyone in Unley (and elsewhere) can enjoy.

There is an unpleasant and entitled sense of propriety guiding some of those opposed to this plan, which still hasn’t gone to the design and costing stage at council yet.

I really marvel at the capacity of some in my neck of the woods to ignore the fact that so many Adelaide suburbs have a genuine infrastructure and green space deficit, and to carry on like they are forgotten people.

It happened last year when some of the locals were whipping themselves into a frenzy over the proposed police horse complex on the southern parklands, saying the people of the inner south would be robbed of precious green space.

Aside from Heywood Park and Souter Park and the Soldiers Memorial Gardens and Unley Oval and North Unley Playground and Wayville Reserve and the Goody Saints ground, there’s not really any green space in the inner south at all.

The other thing is that all those parks are immaculately designed and manicured, unlike in poorer parts of town where you’re lucky if the council bothers to mow the verges.

The stupidity with this issue though is that it involves no loss of access to green space anyway. Zero, zilch, nil, nada.

There is a broader issue at play here and it is something we have seen in so many other development issues, most of which involve grassroots sport such as the Forestville Hockey Club saga or the SANFL’s move to the old Crows home at West Lakes.

It tells a bigger story about how the tiniest organised minority can act as a handbrake to any kind of development at all.

For all the overblown hysteria being peddled by the anti-fence brigade, guess what percentage of Unley ratepayers even bothered to respond to the council’s calls for feedback via its fence survey.

The figure was 2.2 per cent – not 2.2 per cent against, but 2.2 per cent in total – including those who responded that they have no issue.

The clear takeout from this number is that 97.8 per cent of people in Unley couldn’t care less about the issue at all.

This vast and silent majority should be listened to.