Aussie basketball legend Shane Heal slams the state of funding in NSW as ‘disgraceful’

SPECIAL REPORT: NSW community sport is in crisis with funding stagnant for decades. See how far NSW is falling behind other states.

Funding for community sporting organisations is stuck at the same level as it was during the Sydney Olympics, as NSW lets other states lead the way.

SPORTING bodies across NSW have united behind a call for more funding with basketball NSW saying it needs 136 more courts to meet demand today and AFL NSW calling for space to accommodate another 16,000 players by the end of the decade.

A damning report from Sport NSW found community sport is in crisis with organisations receiving the same level of funding they received when Sydney staged the Olympics in 2000 and suffering from a dire lack of facilities.

“It‘s absolutely disgraceful that the state government hasn’t got behind basketball more,” four-time Olympian Shane Heal said.

“In the biggest city in the richest state in Australia the lack of facilities for basketball is a joke,” said Heal, who is currently head coach of the Sydney Flames WNBL team.

The Playing Catch Up report found 10,000 children who wanted to play basketball were being turned away every year and that the organisation in Queensland received eight times as much funding.

Left to right: Jordan Miletic of the U8 Bulls FC Academy, Softball NSW CEO Stuart Clarke, Stephan Rochecouste of Wheelchair Sports NSW, Jean Hong and Emma Fogale of Northern Suburbs Basketball Association. Picture: Brendan Read

After The Daily Telegraph revealed the report yesterday Premier Dominic Perrottet conceded: “We can do more and we will.

“There‘s always different sports that have different needs and we always work through with those providers to ensure that support is there.”

Basketball chief executive Maria Nordstrom said: “Based on the demand we have at the moment we have a shortage of 136 basketball courts.”

She said basketball would be a “foundation tenant” of any new sporting facility that would be shared with other sports such as badminton, futsal and volleyball.

However volleyball in NSW receives $15,000 compared with $231,000 in Queensland.

“They cannot really do anything with that kind of funding to support their community,” she said.

Sport NSW chairman Chris Hall said the report had “shone a light” on how sports in NSW are “struggling in terms of their funding and the facilities they are lacking”.

The organisational bodies of some sports, including Olympic sports, receive as little as $5000 a year.

“How can we expect so much of our sports, ask them to provide safe environments, keep up with new legal frameworks, implement data protection policies, run competitions with modern systems, and the rest of it, while giving them such a minuscule level of funding?” Mr Hall said.

Australian Olympic basketballer Lauren Jackson has joined the call to invest in local facilities. Picture: David Swift

Riverstone Little Athletes Lara Roberts, 13, (left) and Marlee Gill, 13. Lara says her sport “absolutely” needs more funding. Picture: Jonathan Ng

Ice Skating NSW chief executive Rebecca Andrew said the sport received just $10,000 a year in funding and had seen two of three Olympic sized ice rinks in Sydney close this year.

“NSW has produced so many of Australia‘s Olympians and future generations need training facilities urgently. Let’s hope this crucial funding is delivered for sports,” she said.

Her point was endorsed by AFL NSW which said it had seen a 260 per cent growth in the number of teams from 2012-2019 in Greater Sydney and would need space for 16,000 more players by the end of the decade.

Labor leader Chris Minns said community sport in NSW was “going backwards. We are really at the tipping point here,” he said.

“I would much rather see the next generation actually playing basketball on a court with their friends than playing a computer game with basketball on it.”

Dual basketball Olympic medallist and Olympic flag-bearer Lauren Jackson told The Telegraph: “I grew up playing basketball in Albury. Community sport provides so much to children from all walks of life.

“The lack of indoor courts has long been a challenge in Sydney, Albury and across most parts of NSW.”

The NSW Office of Sport annual reports show that last year it handed out $2.45m in Organisation Support Program grants, with a cap of $60,000, compared to $2.057m in 2000. If that had been tied to inflation it would now be $3.44m.

Through that period the adult sport participation in NSW has more than doubled from 2.48 million to 5.6 million people.