AFL safety fears about Adelaide Oval’s capacity to host two footy fixtures either side of the Sheffield Shield final have been called out as “fictitious” and “bullshit” by the oval’s former curator Les Burdett.
Last week the AFL shot down a proposal for the Shield final to be played in between rounds two and three of the league season, stating the risks of injury to players and relocation of the games were too high.
A bid by CA and SACA to stage the Sheffield Shield final at the Adelaide Oval has failed.Credit: Getty Images
That decision followed the refusal of a request to the South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas to waive the multimillion-dollar cost of “Footy Express” bus services to and from AFL matches during the year, in return for making the ground available to cricket that week.
Burdett, who mentored the current Adelaide Oval curator Damien Hough and remains in demand as a turf consultant in Australia and overseas, declared over the weekend that the AFL’s concerns were baseless.
“None. None,” he said on FiveAA radio in Adelaide when asked what risks there were for football. “You probably need 24 hours of continual torrential rain, that’s not going to happen in Adelaide, and it’s just overkill. I just think the AFL are trying to find excuses.
“For Damien to say that he can deliver, and I know he can deliver, and I know what equipment and great support he’s got with his staff, he’d deliver it easily. I love my footy, but I love my cricket, and you’re depriving South Australians from watching our cricket team play in a grand final on Adelaide Oval when it’s doable.”
The AFL had pointed to advice from “independent turf experts” to outline the case for not having the Shield final at Adelaide Oval.
“It’s fictitious what the AFL are coming up with, and this so-called expert, I know most of the guys in Australia, I still pitch-advise Cricket Australia and I still link to these people, I’d like to know who it is,” Burdett said. “I couldn’t sit back and listen to the bullshit.
“If the outfield gets wet, hoo-haa, you’re irrigated anyway. The outfield of Adelaide Oval is designed to take six inches of rain in one hour, 150 millimetres of rain in an hour. We’re never going to get that in Adelaide, but that’s the way they design it.”
The decision to bring football back to Adelaide Oval was a contentious one. Burdett was heavily involved in making the case for drop-in pitches as a potential improvement on what had gone before.
“The whole idea of doing it is so you can play football one day and cricket the next. That was the selling point,” he said. “With drop-in pitches you get more bums on seats, and there’s no transition period where you waste time to rejuvenate your pitches for cricket, or autumn where you soften them for football season.
“It’s all doable, and the reason the drop-in pitches came to life was so you can use the ground more. Here’s an opportunity to use the ground more and they’re saying no.”
