Eskdale Park upgrade to combat the 'ipad revolution'

An election promise made by Maryborough MP Bruce Saunders in 2017 about upgarding Eskdale Park will finally come to fruition

WORK TO BEGIN: Eskdale Park Trustees, Ronald Wroe, Cathy Lethbridge, Steve Einam and Martin Purcell meet with Bruce Saunders (centre) to announce the start of the facility upgrade at Eskdale Park. Picture: Brendan Bowers

RUGBY LEAGUE: An election promise made by Maryborough MP Bruce Saunders in 2017 about upgrading Eskdale Park will finally come to fruition.

Saunders believes that the upgrades will help combat the 'Ipad revolution' and get kids back playing sport.

"The world's changing and unless we give the parents and the kids the facilities, we won't get them out there,” he said.

Initially proposed in November 2017 the renovations to the Eskdale Park facilities will begin in the next two weeks.

Maryborough MP Bruce Saunders said the investment in Eskdale Park would go towards improving the facilities at the discretion of the Eskdale Park trust board.

Saunders believes that the State Government is assisting grass-roots sport participation with the Get Started program which helps children financially to register with sporting groups.

"The Sports Minister is announcing new strategies to assist,” he said.

Saunders believes that sporting groups and schools need to work together to optimise sporting resources moving forward.

"I think there will be a rationalisation of sporting facilities due to economic costs and because volunteers are becoming fatigued.”

"It is always the same ten or so parents at the club's doing the work.”

"This was an election commitment from me and the Palaszczuk government, $500,000 to upgrade Eskdale Park,”

Saunders believes the upgrades to Eskdale Park could draw potential NRL trial and Intrust Super Cup games once completed.

Eskdale Park trustee Ronald Wroe agrees that the upgrades can assist in attracting teams back to Maryborough.

"If you go back many years we had teams like St George and Souths play at Eskdale Park and rugby league was thriving,” he said.

The Eskdale Park Trust have planned to commence the project by upgrading the lighting on field's one and two.

At present Eskdale Park have 100 lux power on the main field, on the training field it's only about 60 lux.

The main field will have a lighting upgrade to 200 lux and the training field lux will also increase.

It will be followed up by underground irrigation of the entire facility.

The final stage of the upgrade will include the perimeter fencing of the grounds.

Originally published as Eskdale Park upgrade to combat the 'ipad revolution'