The Olympics’ biggest spectator sport makes its Brisbane stadium pitch
Queensland is ill-equipped to host Olympic soccer, Football Queensland and Football Australia have warned in their review submission.
Football Queensland’s proposal for a “tier two” stadium at Perry Park.Credit: Populous
In the lead-up to the 2000 Sydney Olympics, the Gabba was redeveloped largely for the purpose of hosting Olympic soccer, leaving no legacy for the sport – cricket and AFL reaped the spoils.
Determined to prevent history repeating, soccer has made its pitch to the 100-day Olympic infrastructure review for a permanent legacy in Brisbane.
In a joint submission, Football Queensland and Football Australia – the sport’s state and national governing bodies – have put forward a master plan for Brisbane 2032 that goes beyond just the ambitions of soccer.
They call for a new 60,000-seat oval stadium and aquatic centre at Victoria Park, a Suncorp Stadium upgrade, and a new 15,000-seat arena.
But the holy grails for soccer would come with the redevelopment of Perry Park into a boutique stadium for the Games, and the creation of a 10-pitch high-performance “State Home of Community Football” at FQ’s Meakin Park headquarters in Slacks Creek.
In their submission, FQ and FA say football is Queensland’s largest club-based participation sport, with more than 350,000 active players – more than both rugby codes and Australian rules combined.
It also sells more tickets at Olympic Games than any other sport, largely due to its ability to be played in large stadiums across a host nation, as happened when the Gabba hosted matches in 2000.
Queensland led Australia in grassroots growth, they say, and the state was well represented in national team squads – “especially following the Matildas’ historic fourth-place finish at the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup”.
“Nevertheless, despite this momentum, Queensland’s football infrastructure is critically insufficient to meet current demands, let alone the requirements for the successful delivery of the Olympic Football Tournament during the Brisbane 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games,” the governing bodies say in their submission.
“Strategic investment in football infrastructure will not only enable the successful delivery of the Games but also create a lasting legacy of modern, fit-for-purpose venues that will serve Queensland communities for generations to come.”
The submission has the backing of Brisbane Roar, the Australian Professional Leagues (A-Leagues), the Asian Football Confederation, the Oceania Football Confederation, the ASEAN Football Federation, and the Professional Footballers Australia players’ union.
Football Australia chief executive James Johnson said it also had “in principle support” from FIFA.
At the heart of the submission is a boutique “tier two” stadium at Perry Park in Bowen Hills, which could hold 17,000 spectators and scale up with temporary seating during the Games.
Perry Park would form part of a master-planned sports precinct extending from Victoria Park, about 1.5 kilometres to the south-west. The submission estimates a cost of up to $200 million.
Football Queensland’s proposal for a “tier-two” stadium at Perry Park.Credit: Populous
“We’re talking about a stadium that, for the Olympics purpose, can be up to 30,000 people that would attend, which is a good football-sized piece of infrastructure,” Johnson said.
“But then beyond the Olympics, full legacy, it’s a stadium that the Brisbane Roar could utilise.
“It’s also a stadium for national teams as well, because of the overuse of Suncorp.”
On that point, Johnson revealed Brisbane had missed out on Matildas and Socceroos matches due to the lack of venue options in the city.
“There are instances, and I’m saying this on the record, when we look around at where we can put Socceroos or Matildas content, where we actually have to disregard Brisbane sometimes because of the size of [Suncorp] stadium,” he said.
“If it’s a round-two qualifier, for instance, against a weaker nation like Bangladesh, where we were not confident of getting to the 50-plus [thousand] numbers, if we want to be in a stadium with great atmosphere, we’re looking for something about half the size of that.”
Football Australia chief executive James Johnson.Credit: Glenn Hunt/Getty Images
Even for bigger matches, Johnson said, Brisbane was often overlooked due to Suncorp Stadium’s congested events calendar.
“Suncorp Stadium is heavily used, particularly during the NRL season, and in a sport that requires a good playing condition, if it’s overused, we can’t go there because we want the pitch to be in top condition,” he said.
The stadium would be designed to host various rectangular sports, but even without other codes, Football Queensland chief executive Rob Cavallucci said Perry Park would be well used.
“The content volume that we have now that could utilise a tier-two stadium is 149 individual pieces of content, which is staggering,” he said.
“That’s why there are high levels of justification for the need from a football perspective – and that’s only football content, by the way.
“That’s not other content opportunities that might come from other rectangular sports or concerts.”
A crowd of 3712 packed into Perry Park on the weekend to watch a women’s A-League match between Brisbane Roar and Adelaide United – a club record.
A club record 3712 fans packed into Perry Park to watch the Brisbane Roar v Adelaide United A-League Women’s match on Sunday.Credit: Brisbane Roar
The submission takes a big-picture view of Games planning.
“To realise this vision within an acceptable cost envelope and maximise the long-term legacy benefits, football is recommending a comprehensive, master-planned spine of sporting and entertainment venues and infrastructure be developed in Brisbane’s inner city, centred on the strategically significant Victoria Park precinct,” the submission says.
“This precinct would be seamlessly connected to key transport nodes, including rail and metro, facilitating access to the CBD, airport, trade coast, and the proposed location for the Brisbane 2032 athletes’ village.”
Cavallucci, the former LNP state member for Brisbane Central, said that was a deliberate approach.
“It was absolutely focusing on what’s best for the city, what’s best for the state, what’s best for the Olympics, what’s best for the experience of not only football participants, but the stakeholders across the state,” he said.
“A master-planned approach and a commitment to that was, in our view, always going to be a really important step, where we weren’t approaching the organising authorities with our hand out for football.
“We went there with a number of opportunities for all that we think benefit all sports and benefit Brisbane as a whole, and as the host city for the Olympics.”
Competition venues aside, the governing bodies also rang the alarm about a lack of training facilities for the men’s and women’s teams that will compete at Brisbane 2032.
At last year’s Paris Games, there were 16 men’s teams and 12 women’s teams. The women’s program is widely expected to expand by 2032.
“With a greater deficiency of training site suitability in regional areas, a more cost-efficient solution would be to focus team training sites within Brisbane and its surrounds. This would also align with the population and football participation spread,” the governing bodies say in their submission.
“The development of Perry Park as a tier-two rectangular football stadium in Brisbane would increase the number of OFT [Olympic Football Tournament] matches staged in Brisbane, which in turn would see more teams needing to utilise training sites in Brisbane.
“The most impactful and legacy-leaving training site infrastructure solution in Brisbane would be the expansion of the Queensland State Home of Community Football at Meakin Park. This would see a total of 10 pitches constructed, which has the capacity to host multiple participating OFT teams, as well as other sporting codes and Olympic teams.”
The Matildas train at QSAC in Nathan during the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup.Credit: Bradley Kanaris/Getty
Cavallucci said the situation in Queensland was “probably more dire” than in other states.
“That was highlighted in the most recent tournament [the FIFA Women’s World Cup]; we did struggle to procure compliant training bases that serviced just four teams,” he said.
“So when we look at where the current planning is to host these games at the 2032 Olympics, we can say unequivocally that in the current locations, there are no compliant training bases.”
Football Australia had previously complained to a Senate inquiry about being left out of all Olympic-related planning.
“Our views weren’t taken into consideration in the last process,” Johnson said.
“What I can say though is the meeting [with the 100-day review panel] that we had, together with Football Queensland on behalf of all football, was a good discussion.
“I think we got our messages across, and there was some understanding on the other side of the table during those conversations. We didn’t see that during the last process.”
Cavallucci said soccer had been left behind in terms of funding for decades, much of which was the code’s own fault.
“We just simply haven’t done the work that other sports have done,” he said – but there were positive signs.
“Perry Park or a ‘tier-two’ rectangular stadium, something that was referred to 0.01 per cent of the time, is now in 50 per cent of the discussions,” he said.
“So, are we making progress? Absolutely. Have we come a long way? Absolutely. Do we have broader stakeholder support and momentum with us? Absolutely. And we’re hopeful that we’re going to be successful.
“When we’ve got broader stakeholder support from outside football, and other infrastructure groups saying similar things, then what we’re doing is absolutely taking us in the right direction.”
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