NNSW scores $11.3m for football home

By CRAIG KERRY Sept. 12, 2013, 11:24 p.m.

NORTHERN NSW Football's $11.3 million field of dreams at Speers Point Park is a reality.

Minister for the Hunter Michael Gallacher will be on site this morning to announce that the NSW government, through the Hunter Infrastructure Fund, will provide $7.3million towards building the Lake Macquarie Regional Football Facility.

It will come 55 weeks after NNSWF and Lake Macquarie City Council applied for $7.3million to help build the football headquarters, which will include two full-sized FIFA-standard synthetic all-weather fields, 10 five-a-side courts, a multi-purpose centre and a 100-space car park.

The multi-purpose building will include administration offices for NNSWF and Macquarie Football, a lounge, licensed cafe and change rooms.

NNSWF will commit up to $4 million of its funds towards the much-needed elite training facility.

NNSWF chief executive David Eland told the Herald last month that it would take about a year to build the centre if and when funding was approved.

The announcement means the headquarters should be built in time to host the International Children's Games in December next year and provide a training base for an Asian Cup team in January 2015. Hunter Stadium will host two Asian Cup pool games, a semi-final, and the play-off for third place.

The Speers Point headquarters, to be built on land at the corner of Five Islands Road and The Esplanade, was one of three projects to which Lake Macquarie council gave priority support in seeking HIF money.

The funding application was one of 49 considered for a shortlist forwarded to Minister for Planning Brad Hazzard from the HIF advisory board.

The funding go-ahead is a major coup for NNSWF, which has campaigned hard for the support and has already lodged a review of environmental factors with Lake Macquarie council in the hope of starting work quickly after getting the green light.

Eland and Football Federation Australia boss David Gallop met with NSW Premier Barry O'Farrell and then Minister for Sport and Recreation Graham Annesley in June to push their claim for the money.

Eland has said the wider sporting community's need for an all-weather surface gave the proposal regional significance.

"I hope the Jets will want to use the facility at the appropriate time, and there's no reason the Knights couldn't use it as well, because Newcastle and the Hunter region desperately needs a facility like this," Eland said in August last year.

"The fact that our elite sports teams don't have a facility when it's wet is just criminal."

The centre will take in the existing turf ground used by the Macquarie Football Academy.

A cornerstone of the project is a commercial five-a-side centre, which NNSWF hopes will make the facility financially self-sufficient.

Eland believed the grounds could host national and state football tournaments.

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