Inner West Council Mayor Darcy Byrne slams reports of Wests Tigers Liverpool stadium

The Wests Tigers’ civil war over a proposed Liverpool base has gone from bad to worse, with a key stakeholder ripping into the club.

Chairman of the Tigers Lee Hagipantelis. (Photo by Jeremy Ng/Getty Images)

The Wests Tigers’ proposal to build a 20,000-seat stadium in Liverpool, in Sydney’s southwest, has been slammed by Inner West Council Mayor Darcy Byrne.

The proposal, led by Liverpool Mayor Ned Mannoun, remains in its early stages, but Mannoun told 2GB that it had been a long time coming.

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It would be with a view to making Liverpool the Tigers’ permanent home, in a facility on the corner of the Hume Highway and Remembrance Avenue, in the heart of the city’s southwest.

The Sydney Morning Herald reports the plan is contingent on 3000 new apartments being built on the site, a mixture of private, public and build-to-rent properties from which the revenue collected would offset the cost of the stadium.

Leichhardt Oval is in need of an upgrade. Picture: Jonathan Ng

The proposal, however, was slammed as “ridiculous” by Inner West Council Mayor Darcy Byrne, whose Council is responsible for the Tigers’ spiritual home at the ageing Leichhardt Oval.

Leichhardt, as well as the club’s second home ground in Campbelltown, is slated to be upgraded pending funding from the state government.

“Any attempt to move Wests Tigers home ground to Liverpool will be met with hard resistance from supporters,” Mayor Byrne, himself a Tigers tragic, wrote in a statement.

“It’s not what the fans want, and there is no mandate to propose it.”

Byrne referred to the Tigers’ recent return to their traditional home grounds for 2024, eschewing larger and more modern facilities at Accor Stadium and CommBank Stadium respectively, and called on the club to focus its efforts on the field.

Hagipantelis is one of the more controversial figures in the sport. (Photo by Jeremy Ng/Getty Images)

“After a decade of campaigning, we‘ve convinced the Club to return to our spiritual home grounds of Leichhardt and Campbelltown in 2024,” he said.

“The adopted position of Wests Tigers Board is to advocate for the long overdue funding to upgrade Leichhardt and Campbelltown.

“The ridiculous idea of now moving all home games to a new stadium in Liverpool, funded by property developers, is absurd and not in keeping with the Club‘s commitment to fans and members.

“Wests Tigers is a much loved sporting franchise not a property development company.

“The Club has no business advocating for housing policies in Liverpool, it‘s time to focus on winning football games and finally making the top eight.”

Lee Hagipantelis, the Club chairman, as well as A-League club Macarthur Bulls, who share the Tigers’ tenancy at Campbelltown, declined to comment when approached by the Herald.

It comes amid reports that the controversial Hagipantelis was on the brink of losing his spot as chair, refusing an invitation to stand down by the club’s majority shareholder, Holman Barnes (owners of Wests Ashfield Leagues Club).