Sydney Football Stadium: Sports Minister Stuart Ayres says it should be torn down

EXCLUSIVE: The party is over for the Sydney Football Stadium, with the Sports Minister saying it had failed during the Sydney Sevens and that it should be torn down.

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THE party is over for the Sydney Football Stadium, with Sports Minister Stuart Ayres saying it had “failed” during the Sydney Sevens rugby tournament and that it deserved to be “torn down”.

While 35,000 fans attended the stadium during the rugby competition at the weekend, Mr Ayres said the outdated venue was equip­ped to serve food and beverages to only 15,000 of them.

Pushing the state government’s plan to build a new 55,000-seat stadium at the Moore Park location, Mr Ayres took aim at the current venue’s toilet facilities.

Fans enjoy the atmosphere during the 2016 Sydney Sevens at the SFS.

“If you’re a female at Sydney Football Stadium, hold on, because it’s pretty ordinary,” he told a Committee for Sydney forum held at News Corp Australia headquarters yesterday.

“With food and beverage options we failed at the weekend. With the Sydney Sevens, the one thing that really failed was the capacity to host 30,000 people.”

Mr Ayres said the new stadium at Moore Park would cost $800 million, adding he was prepared to take on the Centennial and Moore Park Trust in a fight to build it on their land adjacent to the SCG.

Mr Ayres said women could expect an ordinary experience at the SFS

Sports Minister Stuart Ayres says the SFS should be torn down.

“(With) Moore Park, it’s fundamentally crucial that we get the right stadium in the right location,” he said. “And to be brutally frank with you, Trust boundaries mean nothing to fans.

“When you walk across Driver Ave or Anzac Parade, you don’t walk through some mysterious checkpoint. You don’t walk over some boundary. You don’t get your passport stamped. It’s a ­historical governance model that’s no longer delivering for the community.”

He also pointed out that Sydney’s monorail and convention and exhibition centre — which were built in 1988, the same year as the SFS — had already been torn down and replaced, adding the SFS deserved the same fate.

Mr Ayres said Sydney was lagging behind every major capital city in Australia on its stadium infrastructure.