Sydney Roosters Joe Kelly offers Easts Leagues Club as vaccine hub

The boss of the Sydney Roosters has made a generous offer to Brad Hazzard as Sydney’s east races to get jabs in arms.

Eastern suburbs residents forced to travel more than 20km to Olympic Park to access a Covid vaccine are calling for a local mass vaccination hub – and the Roosters want to come to the rescue.

Roosters CEO Joe Kelly has offered the NSW government the use of Easts Leagues Club as a mass vaccination hub with Coogee MP, Dr Marjorie O’Neill, writing to Health Minister Brad Hazzard urging him to take it up.

The club on Bronte Road is ideally located near the Bondi Junction transport interchange.

There is precedent for using leagues clubs with the Penrith Panthers also offering up theirs for a mass vaccination clinic which opened last month.

“We are very happy to support the community of the eastern suburbs to get back to normal as soon as possible through the vaccination rollout,” Mr Kelly told the Wentworth Courier.

“We have offered to open up our Bondi Junction Club as a vaccine hub for everyone in the area.

“We are a destination that everyone knows well and we have the capacity to support the roll out in a safe way.

“I am aware there is no such hub in the eastern suburbs so we are only too willing to assist if the government requires our support.”

The offer comes after the Roosters declared they wished to become the first sporting club in Australia to ban unvaccinated fans from attending home games next season.

“We want members and fans to feel safe about coming to the football and knowing the people they are sitting next to have been fully vaccinated,” chairman Nick Politis said.

Dr O’Neill said concerns about NSW Health’s ability to staff a new vaccination hub could be addressed.

“If testing people and identifying positive cases is becoming less important and vaccinating is more important why is that not the shift in staffing allocations?” Dr O’Neill said.

“Every single day the premier is getting up and telling people they must get vaccinated. We have to make it easier for people, especially as we open up the age ranges.

“The government is telling people to minimise movements and so they should be part of that narrative. Telling people from the eastern suburbs to travel to the western suburbs to get vaccinated doesn’t make sense.”

Dr O’Neill said her staff had been attempting to assist distressed locals who felt unable to navigate several hours long return journey on public transport to Olympic Park to find local vaccination options.

“We’ve had several scenarios where it is the staff at my office calling around the GPs,” Dr O’Neill said.

A NSW Health spokeswoman told the Wentworth Courier the NSW vaccination program, lead by the federal government, had so far administered seven million shots which was more than any other state.

“The vaccine supply from the Australian Government determines how rapidly the rollout can occur,” the spokeswoman said.

“NSW Health has a large footprint of vaccination clinics across the state and is working with local communities to vaccinate as many people as possible as quickly as possible, in order to protect the community from Covid-19.

“This includes mass vaccination centres at Sydney Olympic Park and Qudos Bank Arena in western Sydney, Macquarie Fields in southwest Sydney, Wollongong CBD and Belmont near Newcastle, and a large clinic in Sydney’s CBD (St Vincent’s Hospital).

Homebush is a long way from the east. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Jeremy Piper

“Additional centres were also stood up in recent weeks to support priority vaccination of people living in the 12 Local Government Areas of concern, including a temporary vaccination clinic at the Novotel Hotel at Brighton-Le-Sands.

“In addition to NSW Health’s vaccination clinics, COVID-19 vaccinations are becoming more widely available to the community through GPs, GP respiratory clinics, community pharmacies and Aboriginal Controlled Community Health Services.”

NSW Health encourages everyone who is eligible to visit nsw.gov.au to find the earliest appointment at a vaccination provider including GPs, pharmacies and clinics.