Football Wagga plans to build three new grounds and upgrade drainage and lighting at existing grounds to cater for a participation boom over the next decade.
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The association’s newly-released facilities strategic plan acknowledges it can not cater for a predicted increase in participation from 2,400 players in 2016 to 3,600 players in 2026.
On Wednesday clubs signed-off on the report 18 months in the making.
“Having a strategic plan in the background puts everyone at ease,” president Erwin Budde said.
“We’ll start by picking projects from the strategic plan.”
Major objectives include to provide for each club with a club house that has storage, change rooms, toilets and an indoor space, and to provide separate playing and training fields for all Wagga‐based clubs.
Proposed new ground locations include Rawlings Park (synthetic ground), Brunslea Park near Forest Hill and Boorooma.
A ground at Boorooma would create room for a new club, or allow for an existing club to relocate.
With South Wagga being the smallest Wagga-based club by more than 300 registrations, the aim is to attract more players to South Wagga before allowing a new club to enter the competition.
“We’re very busy building it up,” Budde said.
“In five to 10 years we envisage a sixth Wagga club is required for the sustainability of the sport.”
Football Wagga has plans to place an additional field at South Wagga’s home ground at the Showgrounds.
Kessler Park is one of many grounds that could be used more effectively with improved lighting according to Budde.
“We have a number of fields that have the ability to host night games, unfortunately at those fields, night games conflict with training times,” he said.
“Kessler’s a great example, maybe by lighting the lower field up, and moving training there, we could free-up a top field for night games.”
Football Wagga also hopes to work with council to upgrade drainage at Jubilee Park and make use of the fields during winter.