Nick Ryan: Fitting end to footy’s temple of torment
AS monstrosities go, Nick Ryan says Football Park represented the only time in the history of the developed world where economic interests reclaimed putrid swampland and managed to make it worse.
THE images captured by news crews as the Berlin Wall fell are burned into the collective consciousness. Slabs of soul-destroying concrete crashed to the ground while crowds, as jubilant as they were vast, celebrated the long overdue destruction of what had become the planet’s most potent symbol of malevolent masonry.
It seemed as though a new era was dawning, a time of restored freedom and unshackled opportunity. But as most of the world celebrated, there were those tucked away in another hemisphere who knew the battle was not yet over, the war was not yet won.
They knew there remained one cold, cruel monument to man’s capacity to build temples of torment.
They knew we could never be truly free as long as we had Footy Park.
Even by the aesthetically perverted standards of the 1970s, Football Park is a monstrosity. It represents the only time in the history of the developed world where economic interests reclaimed putrid swampland and managed to make it worse.
Serial killers get to go straight to hell, but a couple of generations of football fans had to spend an hour gridlocked on West Lakes Blvd to end up at the same place.
It’s an outstanding example of the Misanthropic school of architecture that adheres to the principle of making the largest number of people uncomfortable for the longest period of time. They couldn’t have made the place any more unwelcoming if they’d put a moat around it and filled it with sharks who wanted to sign you up for a pyramid selling scheme before biting your head off. It is one of the world’s leading examples of spatial sadism and about as comfortable as a wasp-filled enema.
The only time a largely uncovered, exceedingly exposed concrete stadium with aluminium bench-seating could be considered an appropriate venue for winter sport in Adelaide is when the alternative would be using it in summer.
At least the hypothermic die quietly. Spontaneous combustion of spectators is probably not a good look for a sporting venue.
Those aluminium bench seats will be studied in decades to come as an example of how poor planning has public health outcomes because they’ve created more piles than every piece of earthmoving equipment combined.
Sure, we’ve all seen some good football matches there but just because the prisoner in solitary confinement is absorbed by the race between two flies going up the cell wall, doesn’t mean he’s especially fond of the venue.
The place has been so problematic they even needed a royal commission to get floodlights put up, which seems like overkill now, when all the anti-lights forces had to do was explain the one good thing about their absence was the 12 hours a day when we didn’t have to look at the joint.
There are those with a fondness for the design of stadia like Footy Park but they tend to be
Third-World dictators who find soulless concrete stadiums ideal places to execute their enemies.
But Football Park’s days of assaulting the senses are almost at an end.
On Thursday, the bulldozers moved in and started the demolition that will see the worst stadium in the western world converted to housing, shopping precincts and parkland.
The only link with its footballing past will be the Crows who continue to train there, running around on the old carpark that took hours to leave. I guess that’s fair enough. Whenever you dispose of a huge turd, a bad smell still lingers.