Sydney to get a field of dreams

By TOM SMITHIES
April 11, 2006

FOR too long it's been seen as the poor relation of Australian sport, but now plans are under way to build a national centre of excellence to act as a heartbeat for football here.

The blueprint, revealed yesterday, is aimed at giving football a home, incorporating an elite training centre, medical facilities, FFA headquarters, coaching education and a schools outreach program.

The ambitious concept is still at the drawing board stage, with various sites under consideration. But plans are centred on the ES Marks Field in Sydney's Moore Park, which is owned by the State Government.

Early discussions have taken place between the FFA and the government, including a site meeting, and the FFA hopes to facilitate a decision by the end of the year.

Funding for the centre will be based on a grant from FIFA of at least $680,000, but the FFA plans to plough much more into a lasting base for the sport.


The FFA's head of operations, Matt Carroll, told The Daily Telegraph that within two years a national centre should be operational, to underpin a sport currently under-served by a creaking and scattered infrastructure.

"With so many national teams, we're forever having camps – the Matildas, Young Matildas, the Olyroos, the Joeys etc – there's a need to properly service our teams," he said.


"FIFA are keen on all countries having a home for football and to that end give grants though the Goal scheme."

The ES Marks Field is currently used by a variety of sporting teams, from athletics to rugby league, and the FFA is working on plans that could include split usage.

"This could be a chance to get a co-use of the facilities so the athletics teams could still use it," said Carroll.

"But it is a very large chunk of land with the opportunity to develop a training centre, a field, perhaps a couple of training areas off the main field, and therefore provide use for a fairly under-utilised government asset."

THE SOCCEROOS

The most high-profile users of the centre would be the national team. The coaching staff have long bemoaned the lack of a top-level training facility for the team to prepare at here, a situation highlighted by the Socceroos' assistant coach, Graham Arnold.

"If you look in Sydney, for instance, when the Socceroos come into camp we struggle to get training grounds, and a lot of times the surface isn't up to the required quality. You're talking about players who train in state of the art facilities in Europe, and sometimes here they have to train on a rugby league field."

Every other representative team would also use the facilities for training and, in many cases, for competitive fixtures.

THE LOCATION

While discussions have centred on the Moore Park site, and another mentioned has been the St George site near Sydney Airport, Carroll insists other sites, and indeed other states, are a possibility.

"We're not locked into Sydney. We're a national organisation. If another government had an appropriate piece of land, appropriately located, whether in Victoria or Queensland or wherever, we could look at that as well."


With no final decision yet taken, it will be at least another two years, probably longer, until the facility is up and running. But the grant from FIFA comes with conditions attached, including a timeframe by which certain stages have to be completed.

"To actually get something developed and built will obviously take a couple of years," Carroll said. "But I'd like to think by the end of this year or before then we'd have identified and reached agreement with the landlord, whoever that might be."

THE FACILITIES

To meet the expectations of the Socceroos, and also make a statement about the sport's mindset, it's vital the proposed centre offer a one-stop shop of top-level amenities.

"We would have treatment rooms and so forth, places for team doctors and physios to work out of – another possibility is to extend those to be open to the public as a sports medical centre," said Carroll.

The FFA has come under pressure to overhaul the country's coaching structure, and such a base would provide a base for coaching education to expand.

"We want to ramp up the FFA's post-accreditation program. We're keen to offer a range of courses, whether for the (football) community or A-League clubs, in conjunction with the high-performance unit, to upskill and learn the latest trends," said Carroll.

"This gives us the opportunity to bring people together to improve coaches. It's the sort of place you could bring all the A-League coaches together, together with the national coaches, to have not only discussions but also onfield demonstrations and so on. We also want to upskill coaches at state league level and below as well."

THE CLUB SIDE

The FFA is open to the idea of a tenant giving the centre daily usage, and the obvious candidate would be Sydney FC. The A-League club is on the lookout for another training facility – something coach Pierre Littbarski is very concerned about – and chief executive Tim Parker concedes the club would be interested.

"If the FFA were to want to talk about this we'd be happy to engage. It's an exciting idea.

"We are considering our options on our training facilities. We have extremely good terms where we are at the moment (at Parklea) but if we were able to go in on the coat-tails of a high-performance project then that would be perfect. Realistically it would be about the right timescale as well. We need two or three years to prove ourselves financially first."

THE SCHOOLS

Football is booming at school-age level, and the pressure is on the FFA to use the World Cup excitement to lock-in grassroots support, and halt the long-standing drift away to other sports at teenage level.

It's a gauntlet that Carroll concedes has to be be taken up.

"Football has to be more involved with schools, particularly high schools.

"We want to work with schools, bring their coaches and players in, give them the opportunity to come to a national centre.

"With a centre like this, you build-up not just grass and rooms but people – we'd have visiting fellows, so that when a school or a club has a problem with a particular coaching issue, we can have a string of people attached to the academy who are specialist coaches whose expertise we can call upon."


http://dailytelegraph.news.com.au/story/0,20281,18770674-5001111,00.html

Good news finally football devlopment is being taken seriously.