Finally! At long last! It’s here!
Behold, sports fans, the Emerald City’s modern-day Coliseum with its comfy seats, toilets that smell like an English rose garden, and open concourses so you can roam like wildebeests from bar to food outlet to wellness room instead of feeling like the flattened sardine you became whenever more than 10,000 people packed into that tired old hag otherwise known as the Sydney Football Stadium.
The new Allianz Stadium is world-class … but will it become another white elephant?Credit:Wolter Peeters
The New Allianz Stadium officially opens on Sunday with a free concert — some will argue that’s still too much to watch Guy Sebastian — before things officially get real the following Friday when the Roosters and South Sydney meet in the final round of the rugby league season.
What a time to be alive. Even half alive.
Is the NRL happy? Well, of course not — it wants even more millions for suburban grounds.
Is the state government going to allow the Rabbitohs to play there, just down from its spiritual home of Redfern? Well, of course not — it’s holding the club to its deal at Accor Stadium.
Top: The newly completed Allianz Stadium lights up ahead of its grand unveiling. Bottom: Inside the rebuilt stadium concourse.Credit:Wolter Peeters
Sydney, we are doing sport all wrong and if we’re going to justify the $830 million spend on new digs at Moore Park we better start getting it right.
And by getting it right I mean by filling the bloody thing. That will only happen when sports, clubs and silly bureaucrats start putting fans first.
Your humble correspondent returns after a few weeks in Europe post-Commonwealth Games, including a trip on Sunday to London Stadium to watch West Ham host Brighton and Hove in the Premier League.
The Hammers were hammered 2-0 but the experience … oh the experience.
Sure, London Stadium is not Old Trafford, Anfield or Emirates. It was the main site for the 2012 London Olympics and has been described as a “bowl of blancmange”.
But what a tasty blancmange it turned out to be.
Food trucks and bars lined the perimeter of the arena. The South African chicken and sweet chilli kebab I inhaled was delish, the beer was cold and properly poured by happy staff, and all of it reasonably priced.
But what struck this punter most was you could buy these things before, during and long after the game. It was like I was a real adult.
None of this pulling-down-the-shutters-midway-through-the-second-half malarkey we get in Sydney. No overbearing security guards glaring at you like you’re on day release from Long Bay because you’ve dared ask for three beers.
Nah, mate. Only two beers at a time. RSA and all that. You’ll have to take those to your mates then line up for another 30 minutes so I can pour you a single mid-strength that’s dead flat and you can pay me $9.50 for the honour. We just can’t trust anyone who buys three beers at a time, eh?
When the match was over, most of the 62,449-strong crowd converged on Stratford Station but instead of fearing it would take hours to get out of the place, dozens of crowd control attendants calmly told you which way to go, letting sections of people through at a time so there was no crush.
You were guided from the stadium all the way to the station platform. We were sipping Singapore Slings in Soho within 40 minutes of full-time.
The NRL would be better served directing its energy towards a rollicking and painless game-day experience instead of squeezing yet more millions out of the government.
Only ARL Commission chairman Peter V’landys could threaten to move the grand final to Brisbane at precisely the same time a world-class stadium built mostly for the benefit of his code was being completed.
NRL CEO Andrew Abdo and ARLC chairman Peter V’landys.Credit:Dean Sewell
The Great PVL’s unyielding support for rugby league is admirable and his combative rhetoric appeals to the game’s supporters who appreciate that he’s out there, the li’l battler, battling for them.
But the NRL can’t have it both ways. Only a few years ago, it threatened to move the grand final if it didn’t get new stadia. Now, it’s doing the same thing if it doesn’t get more money for suburban grounds.
Meanwhile, the state government needs to forget about Souths’ existing deal to play at Accor until 2030 and let them return to Moore Park.
The city’s so-called “stadium wars” ended in June 2020 when the SCG Trust and Venues NSW merged. It meant silly politics could be pushed aside so sporting events could be played at the right time, in the right stadiums, to ensure they are full.
Has anyone considered the following model:
Play regular-season matches at CommBank Stadium in the west and Allianz Stadium in the east. For the headline fixtures, like State of Origins, NRL grand finals, Socceroos and Wallabies internationals, and those lucrative friendlies involving the likes of Barcelona FC and Liverpool, use the 80,000-seat Accor.
Make sure there’s adequate public transport to all of them. Make sure there are helpful staff telling people where to go. Make sure fans can get a drink, a feed, and price both reasonably. Give people a reason to attend sport instead of making it feel like a costly privilege.
Last weekend, the NRL grand final rematch between Souths and Penrith was played at Accor Stadium on a Thursday night. Crowd: 15,208.
Last weekend, AFL arch-rivals Carlton and Collingwood met in a blockbuster at the MCG. Crowd: 88,287.
Carlton and Collingwood in action at a packed MCG.Credit:Getty
Sydney finally has the stadium network a city of 5.3 million people deserves and needs. How about we use these venues properly, so they don’t become another white elephant but, instead, a vibrant and multi-coloured elephant?
Rabbitohs hopping mad with Bennett’s play for Latrell
When Wayne Bennett left South Sydney, rebuking offers to be a consultant for the next decade, he gave them an assurance he wouldn’t poach players for the Dolphins.
And if he did so, he’d come through the front door and talk to them first.
Souths are quickly realising that when Bennett leaves a club, all bets are off.
If they were cranky about attempts to secure five-eighth Cody Walker, they were outright furious about Bennett publicly declaring his interest in fullback Latrell Mitchell if he “goes to market” on November 1.
The Rabbitohs are confident their No.1 won’t be going anywhere: he just bought a $4.1 million home in Sydney and has never looked happier than he does right now at Redfern.
Which makes you wonder why Bennett would crank up unnecessary speculation about his future.
All quiet on the Kambosos front
George Kambosos jnr often referred to Sun Tzu’s Art of War in the lead-up to his world title fight against Devin Haney. For the rematch, he’s deferring to Simon and Garfunkel’s The Sound of Silence.
Kambosos spoke to everyone and anyone in the lead-up to his lightweight title defence at Marvel Stadium in July, but he’s expected to pull down the shutters following the announcement earlier this week confirming he would fight Haney at Rod Laver Arena in Melbourne on October 16.
He won’t confirm nor deny speculation he will head to the Philippines next week to train with former sparring partner Manny Pacquiao.
The Kambosos camp pushed hard for the rematch to be held in his hometown of Sydney, but the promoters stuck solid to their deal with the Victorian government.
$45m NBA star’s North Sydney pick-up game
Denver Nuggets star Jamal Murray has been in town promoting the NBA but still found the time to prepare for the upcoming season.
So much so that he asked Tristan Hay, the NBA’s man on the ground in Australia, to organise a pick-up match as Murray recovers from an ACL injury that sidelined him last season.
Hay hastily arranged nine players and a match at the Shore School in North Sydney took place involving Murray, who will earn a whopping $45 million this season.
The only man to move quicker than Murray was the Nuggets chief medical officer, who quickly boarded a plane and made the 20-hour journey from Colorado to watch the game before returning home.
THE QUOTE
“If there are air-raid sirens, they are going to have to stop.” — Ukraine captain and Arsenal star Oleksandr Zinchenko as football resumed in his war-torn country. No fans will be allowed into stadiums and half of the 16 top-flight clubs will have to play in other venues for safety reasons.
THUMBS UP
Socceroos coach Graham Arnold has his fair share of critics, but he’s got one very loyal supporter in former mentor Guus Hiddink, who didn’t hesitate to accept Arnold’s offer to join the camp for the warm-up match against New Zealand at Suncorp Stadium on September 22. Reunited and it feels so good.
THUMBS DOWN
The AFL rarely gets it wrong, but it should stop with this nonsense of having a bye weekend before the playoffs. The final day of the round was enthralling as finals placings were decided. But the momentum of the season hit the wall with no matches being played this weekend.
It’s a big weekend for … five-eighth Noah Lolesio, who has been thrown the Wallabies’ No.10 jumper for the fourth time of his career for the Test match against South Africa at Adelaide Oval on Saturday afternoon. Coach Dave Rennie is desperate for someone to make the jumper their own.
It’s an even bigger weekend for … Roosters and Melbourne, who square off at AAMI Park on Friday night. The Chooks will be fielding their first-choice spine of James Tedesco, Luke Keary, Sam Walker and Sam Verrills for the first time against the Storm. Smell that? That’s the intoxicating aroma of finals football just around the corner.
