Melbourne Storm arrive in Albury despite council objections
An Albury City Councillor involved in preventing the Melbourne Storm from training on council grounds says community members do not want the rugby league team in the border town.
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Melbourne Storm CEO Dave Donaghy expressed disappointment at his NRL club being snubbed by Albury City council, which has forced it to train on a facility normally used by a rival football code Donaghy insists his club will have a ghost-like presence in Albury, just over the border in NSW, where 32 players and 18 staff will be based until at least Saturday.
Unable to train together in Victoria due to government restrictions, Storm were planning to use Albury’s Greenfield Park, the town’s major local rugby league ground, which also hosted a Super Rugby trial earlier this year. But on Tuesday evening at an extraordinary meeting, Albury City councillors voted 5-4 against them using any facilities they managed.
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Speaking on 2GB on Wednesday morning, Independent Councillor Graham Docksey voted said he wasn’t convinced by the NRL briefing and voted against the Storm using council parks.
“I’m not convinced that all the protocols would be sufficient for my community,” Mr Docksey said.
“We have two doctors … one confirmed that the testing procedures are not 100 per cent in relation to temperature testing.
“The number of community members who spoke to me against having the Storm here was overwhelming.
“We are virus-free and I want to keep it this way.”
Albury Councillor Murray King said he was “embarrassed” by the outcome.
The Storm activated their backup plan and will train on Albury Sports Ground, a non-council managed facility, which hosts the Albury Tigers Australian rules and cricket clubs.
“I was involved in a phone hook-up last night so I wasn’t particularly shocked but certainly disappointed is probably the best way to sum it up,”’ Donaghy said when asked on Fox League Live about the council’s decision.
“We were aware of some of the challenges that the council was expressing and like any of our plans we made a contingency.
“We’ve got our hotel set up, we’ve got the gyms set up and from tomorrow we’ll be training at the Albury Tigers ground.” Donaghy stressed the Storm’s plans would effectively separate them from the rest of the community.
‘We will largely be ghosts in Albury,” he said.
The local council held an extraordinary meeting on Tuesday night.
The councillors passed a motion that council facilities, including the home of the local rugby league club, Greenfields Park, should not be made available to the NRL club.
When they came together for the first time on Monday, Storm players embraced the move to the border town, having been briefed for weeks about the potential for heading out of Victoria.
But many players remained cautious about the significant restrictions they’ll face once they start training back in Melbourne and peppered club officials with questions.
The NRL return-to-play protocols limit the players to their homes and training venues and don’t allow for visitors.
The volume of rules was so large half the Storm playing squad logged in to a special Zoom meeting on Sunday to go through them, before they had their questions answered on Monday.
“In terms of when they are actually at training there’s hardly a concern. Things will be different but are not really challenging,” Storm football manager Frank Ponissi said.
“It was more the question about life, when we are back at AAMI Park and they are living at home, about what they can and can’t do.
“It’s about getting visitors, who can and can’t come in. The limitations are significant. That seemed to worry them and drew lots of questions.
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“But everyone left saying yes, they are onerous, but if we don’t have them we don’t play. It’s going to be far from the perfect year, so to get on the field, we’ll do what we have to do.”
The 50 players and staff travelled to Albury on Tuesday where they will occupy an entire 88-room resort by themselves for four days before being able to return home on Saturday.
They remain hopeful training restrictions in Victoria could soon be lifted allowing them to use AAMI Park, albeit in smaller groups, from next week.