Socceroos should get red card on stadium
It is mighty big of soccer to offer the WA Government the opportunity to open its new Burswood stadium in 2018 with a blockbuster “Ashes” match between the Socceroos and England. However, it is an offer that comes with a few big assumptions.
The first assumption is that the State Government will, in three years time, have forgiven Australian soccer officials for leaving Perth off its map of Australia when it drew up the Asian Cup program. You would hope they haven’t forgiven them yet. There were seven games in Canberra during the recent tournament and four, including a semifinal, in Newcastle. Zero in WA — a State that had recently spent $90 million on a rectangular stadium upgrade to benefit soccer and rugby.
That is about as big a kick in the guts as you can give any mainland Australian capital city.
The Socceroos.
The second assumption is that the Government will have forgiven soccer for the dearth of international matches here generally in the past 10 years.
If you were the Government, and soccer put its “Ashes” soccer match proposal to you, you might want to put your hard-nosed business cap on and say something like: “No worries, we will consider your proposal when you give us a written and binding commitment to play two genuine internationals a year at our new stadium for the next 10 years. One of those would be the one you should play here annually anyway. The other of those is to make up for you snubbing our city in the past decade in the scheduling of soccer internationals.”
The third and biggest assumption is as much about timing as anything else: If the Burswood stadium is ready to go in December 2017, why wouldn’t the Government take the opportunity to ask the Perth Scorchers to strike the first blows in anger there in the Big Bash League. And if the stadium is ready in March 2018, why would the Government snub the AFL, which will play at least 22 games a year at the stadium when soccer has no recent exposed form in playing even one international here?
And the final assumption is that the stadium launch should centre on a sporting event at all. If the completion of the stadium falls somewhere in between December 2017 and March 2018 and a big international music act like U2 were in Australia, why wouldn’t we be asking them to open the stadium in front of 60,000 people in the stands and another 15,000 on the arena itself, proving that an $800 million taxpayer investment has worth that stretches well beyond sporting boundaries?
Artist's impression of the new stadium.
Forget Jerry Maguire’s famous catch cry: “Show me the money.” When it comes to the Burswood stadium, the demand our Government should be making of every sport that has its sights set on being the star act is: “Show us the content.”
And to that end, AFL football is a clear leader, assuming a deal can be struck for it to be the new stadium’s major tenant. Cricket is the big fish that the Government needs to hook.
And soccer? Well, right now they are just the blokes who forgot we existed when the biggest tournament Australia has ever staged in their sport was played everywhere but here.
Related: Footy seeks stadium opener
Let’s not kid ourselves. There will be plenty of sports making cases and beating chests when it comes to the new stadium. And none of these sports have a particularly compelling moral case to back their argument.
If the stadium is ready in March 2018, why would the Government snub the AFL, which will play at least 22 games a year at the stadium? Picture:
Football was gifted Subiaco Oval after the sport’s financial mismanagement left it broke, helped by government to redevelop it and yet still managed to run it down.
The Socceroos would struggle to find their way to WA without a tour guide and we have had to pay the Wallabies to come here to play rugby against South Africa and Argentina.
The Perth Scorchers could mark opening of the new stadium. Picture: Robert Cianflone/Getty Images
Cricket, like those shell-shocked Australian batsmen of the 1980s facing the West Indian pace attack, can’t decide whether to hook over to Burswood or duck the issue and stay at the dilapidated WACA Ground.
But if we want to get this stadium from the 22 AFL matches a year that will be played there, to the 40 events a year it needs to wipe its own nose financially, cricket is the key player in the equation. When BBL, Tests, one day internationals and T20 internationals are added up, cricket has the potential to bring as many as 10 events a year to Burswood. With crowds for the Adelaide Strikers matches at the new Adelaide Oval climbing past 50,000 this summer, the potential for the sport is obvious.
If cricket needs more convincing and the stadium is finished in time, five BBL matches might do the trick: More than 50,000 people cramming the grandstands and so much money being made they need a barge to cart it over the river to the WACA Ground. And that might make a cricket match to open the stadium a smart choice, even if it puts the noses of other codes out of joint.
Scorchers are BBL champions and major crowd pleasers. Picture: Matt King/Getty Images
Australia’s major sports are very clever chameleons. They parade around as community-minded keepers of their codes but when it comes down to it they switch hats quickly and become keepers of the money. That applies to all of them.
The hat that our Government needs to wear on this one is the one that takes care of taxpayers who will make an investment of well over a billion dollars in and around this stadium and deserve the best bang for their buck in the short, medium and long-term.
