Veteran amateur footy scribe Brad Beitzel says the Premier grand final should be played at Trevor Barker Oval

BRAD Beitzel says the VAFA should switch its Premier grand final from Elsternwick Park to Sandringham’s Trevor Barker Oval

s13ck998 VAFA Grand final Old Xaverians v Collegians (1/6) Xavs Marcus Allan celebrates a first quarter goal at Elsternwick

The VAFA should ring John Mennie now to book his Trevor Barker Oval for this Saturday’s Premier grand final.

Mennie is the Sandringham Football Club general manager and since the City of Bayside’s extensive work on the surface, the ground is the municipality’s jewel sitting in the heart of its crown.

The VAFA uses the TBO for many of its finals and the atmosphere there can’t be beaten with the crowd standing right on the action.

Bayside’s ugly duckling is Elsternwick Park.

EP is where another Premier grand final will be butchered this Saturday by gale-force winds (I’m no scientist but most finales there are industrial-strength-wind tunnel experiments), archaic facilities and a scoreboard that is so disproportionately large it looks like it should be relocated as one of Eastlink’s artworks.

You could name it 1980s scoreboard.

It towers above the ground and a creek.

It’s that large you’d think it would halt those winds that scream up from Elwood beach, take hold on the Elsternwick golf course and crash through football finals.

If only there were an earth tremor and this monstrosity were to crash into the creek.

IS ELSTERNWICK PARK UP TO SCRATCH FOR GRAND FINALS? TELL US BELOW

It sickens me to think of yet another Premier GF being staged at the soulless Elsternwick Park.

Fifteen years ago I reported on then Old Melburnians coach Neil Ross’s forlorn reflections after being smashed in the 1999 Premier grand final.

After acknowledging how good Old Xavs were, he bucketed EP for wrecking what should be the best community football grand final.

This week I rang Ross and his memories are just as relevant today.

“The rooms are concrete boxes (carpet has been laid), the social room has no feel of a footy club, the ground is open and wind swept.

“It’s (EP) a great location … like to see it get some new facilities like get some trees to bring some life.”

Elsternwick Park’s surface has also been like concrete but this year it’s better.

The VAFA has the redevelopment of EP, or finding a new home, on its strategic plan, as it has throughout the decade of reign under CEO Michael Sholly.

The redevelopment is costly and complicated but I’d just wish in the meantime the Amateurs would stop their windy claim of being “the best” when it grandest final is made second rate by staging it at a jet-engine laboratory.