The Lord Mayor of Melbourne bags 'Australia's Home Ground'

Yesterday the Lord Mayor of Melbourne, Councillor Robert Doyle, criticised Sydney's Olympic Park precinct as being wind-swept and run down - a big call for a sporting juggernaut that is only ten years old and the subject of a rolling improvement programme since the park opened in 1999.

This is part of a Melbourne political campaign to get the Rugby League Grand Final hosted in Melbourne but the campaign won't work for a number of reasons.

Sydney is Australia's largest city. Sydney is home to the finance sector with Australia's two largest banks, the Commonwealth and Westpac basing their head offices here, significant Commonwealth Government departments such as the Reserve Bank of Australia and the Australian Federal Police, our contact with Australia's two largest religious orders, the Roman Catholic Church and the Anglican Church are here, radio, television and newspaper empires all call Sydney their home and Sydney is also the telecommunications gateway between Australia and the rest of the world.

Sydney is also the birthplace of civilisation in Australia. Captain Arthur Phillip, RN, landed eleven ships here on the 26th January, 1788.

In the early 1990's under a Liberal/National Government, NSW was lucky enough to see the conversion of farmland, factories and rubbish tips into the finest sporting metropolis ever constructed anywhere. What is now known as Olympic Park encompasses a project physically larger and more costly than the Snowy Mountains Hydro-Electric Scheme and it would take a full day to walk around the perimeter.

Olympic Park is home to the stadium we remember for the 2000 Summer Olympic Games. This same stadium also holds world records for the largest Rugby League and Rugby Union crowds of all time.

Olympic Park is also home to several hotels, vast recreation reserves and picnic areas, the Royal Agricultural Society Showground, two large indoor arenas for tennis and basketball, an International swimming centre and numerous warm-up facilities for competitors. The Park is also home to a suburb for thousands of people to live and it has its own railway station which can move more than 40,000 people an hour.

Comparing this to the Lord Mayor of Melbourne wanting a game that Victorians simply show no interest in hosted at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, which can only hold 7,000 more people (going by official capacity declarations) than Sydney's Olympic Stadium in its current form simply because he wants a home ground advantage for the Melbourne Storm Rugby League Team just doesn't cut it.

Real Footy - that being Rugby League and not that aerial ping pong crap that they play in Melbourne - has always been based in Sydney and SHOULD always be based in Sydney.

Councillor Doyle: Jealousy is a curse. Sydney has hundreds of hectares of world-class sporting venues right on our front doorstep and the train ride from Central to Olympic Park is not more than 40 minutes as you claim but 24 minutes. Pull your head in, you pompous git.

Written at 07:49 on 3 October 2009 by Lord Watchdog.

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