Frustrated Western Sydney Wanderers to wait out Spotless Stadium stay but put pressure on venue management
After serving up a pitch littered with broken plastic cups and a metal screw, Spotless Stadium management has kept quiet but Western Sydney say they have little choice but to trust it won’t happen again.
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WESTERN Sydney say they’ve no choice but to trust that Spotless Stadium won’t inflict another humiliating episode on the A-League club.
But A-League bosses will be closely monitoring preparations for the next home game and have made it clear they won’t allow a repeat of the fiasco.
Spotless Stadium management has kept quiet since Friday night’s 2-0 loss to Newcastle, when they served up an uneven, fragmentary pitch slammed by the players’ union as dangerous and by Jets coach Ernie Merrick as a “disgrace”.
That was even after shards of broken plastic cups and a metal screw — leftovers from a music festival — were hurriedly picked up off the field, having apparently blown down from the stands during Friday’s wild winds.
While the match went ahead the surface was essentially unplayable, evidenced by the slipping and sliding and injuries picked up by some players.
The whole saga was another blow for the Wanderers who, in three transient years during the Western Sydney Stadium rebuild, have dealt with the reality of being a second-class tenant at a multipurpose venue hosting not just AFL and cricket but also concerts and the Sydney Royal Easter Show.
"Very frustrating, not happy,” Wanderers chief executive John Tsatsimas told The Daily Telegraph yesterday.
“But it's not only about the club, it's about our fans, our partners. The general football public are frustrated in this regard.
“We need to be able to make sure everything is in place and the surface is in a presentable fashion.
“It's incumbent upon the venue management to do that and I'm sure they'll be doing everything in that regard.”
The Daily Telegraph approached Spotless Stadium management for comment but did not receive a response.
Tsatsimas confirmed the club will “be committed as per schedule” to seeing out their contract, meaning the Wanderers will host Central Coast in a fortnight along with a further two matches in February before moving into Western Sydney Stadium next season.
Regardless, it’s not possible to relocate the December 7 fixture to ANZ Stadium because it will be prepped for Bon Jovi’s gig the following night.
However A-League chief Greg O’Rourke indicated the February games may not be set in stone.
“It’s important to FFA that the pitch situation last weekend is not repeated,” O’Rourke told The Daily Telegraph.
“We’ll be working diligently with Spotless Stadium to ensure it is in a better condition for the next game.
“If we are unable to come to a position where we agree on the suitability of the pitch we would have to look at the feasibility of playing anymore games there this season.”
Exacerbating the frustration is that this is not the first incident at Spotless — last November a match was postponed and then moved to ANZ Stadium because the pitch was deemed unsafe by Football Federation Australia.
Tsatsimas is well within his rights to push for compensation that was not forthcoming last time.
That aside, he said he had no choice but to trust “every effort will be made for those things not to re-occur”.
“We need to believe that this won't happen again,” Tsatsimas said.
“It's very frustrating to have these conversations but having said that, we need to make sure they understand the significance of what has happened in the past week and how that impacts upon them as a venue and on us as an organisation and sport in general.
"It reflects poorly as a host venue of a sport event.”
The Wanderers confirmed they will play their first match at Western Sydney Stadium against Marcelo Bielsa’s Leeds United on July 20, a showpiece fixture to mark a new, happier era.
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