SA hockey crisis brings scrutiny on where the taxes on Adelaide Oval finish up in local sport
SA hockey today faces its deadline for buying a national hockey league licence. If SA is forced out of the new AHL, the Olympic dream will be shattered for many aspiring South Australian hockey players
Today, Tuesday, is D-Day for SA Hockey.
Without $100,000 falling into the kitty at The Pines at Gepps Cross to fund the $200,000 budget for the State teams, South Australia will - for the first time in more than a century - not participate in the national championships when the new Australian Hockey League is played in October-November.
There are so many disturbing elements to this crisis point in SA hockey.
How did it come to this? The question - posed in The Advertiser last week - of the lasting legacy for Australian Olympic sports from the Sydney Games in 2000 remains more and more relevant. Even Central District premiership player James Gowan was quite vocal on social media on Friday night on how federal and state governments hand over millions and millions of dollars to AFL clubs (that are making healthy profits) to build community centres.
Yet in the community - where Olympians need pathways from grassroot clubs to state teams to national squads - there appears to a financial crisis with non-football sports, such as hockey. Add basketball to this list as well.
SA Hockey chairman James Blackburn made a concerning statement on the SA state government’s funding priorities in sport last week: “The State Government said it does not support state teams.”
It will back SA’s AFL teams, including the very profitable Crows - and Port Adelaide with naming rights to a stadium in Shanghai, China. It will back SA’s basketball team in the women’s national league while some serious funding questions remain unresolved for SA basketball, the grassroots that serve as a feeder to another Australian Olympic division.
When SA Treasurer Rob Lucas was in Opposition, he and his Liberal counterpart Iain Evans, made a point of hitting up the legislation for the redevelopment of the Adelaide Oval to make sure the Stadium Management Authority was hit with a tax that is forwarded to local sport - such as SA hockey.
So when Adelaide Oval is now in its fifth year and about to celebrate 10 million patrons passing through the turnstiles since the redevelopment, where has that “local sport” tax finished up?
Surely by now there is $100,000 in the kitty to be able to rescue the SA state hockey teams.
Why the state government washes its hands of state teams is bewildering.
SA’s newest Hockeyroo, Adelaide Hockey Club striker Miki Spano, did make a very good point in her interview with The Advertiser last week. The Suns and the Hotshots - that are to carry a new name if they do play in the AHL - are about State pride.
“It is vital for me to play for SA,” Spano told The Advertiser. “And for every other South Australian hockey player aspiring to be in the Australian teams.
“And I am proud to be a South Australian. I want to play for SA. This also is about State pride.
“It is just vital we stay together as the SA state team. We have made real progress in recent years as the Suns.
“And it is important that young kids see their heroes in an SA team (at the nationals). It gives them a dream to strive for as well.”
A nightmare has to be cleared away today for that dream to live on.
michelangelo.rucci@news.com.au