Hmm, yes, well ...!
That has been about 7 years in the making now, and still nothing has been built. Basically, either the Joondalup Council or the Arena Joondalup (I forget which it was) agreed to our proposal all those years ago, but said we cannot have it to ourselves and we must go into a 4-way partnership so it becomes a community venue. The 4 sporting clubs involved are us (Joondalup RL), Joondalup RU, Joondalup Little Athletics, and Joondalup Netball. All the netball wanted was upgraded lights for their courts, and they've had them for a couple of years now. Little Athletics basically (from memory) just wanted a place to store all their gear. Joondalup RU, however, will not agree with any of our plans, ideas, ect. We want 2 fields side-by-side so we can hold junior days. They want one field only. For the clubrooms themselves, we want a decent sized changerooms, decent sized storage area, a medical room, ect. They want a bigger function room. That would be fine except the whole building is only allowed to be 'X' size and no more. To get their function room, this would mean tiny changerooms, minimal storage room, ect. Our major sponsor, NorthWest ShedMasters, put in a tender (is that the right terminology?) which was by far the cheapest for the Association, but that got poo-pooed by you know who. The plans have been re-designed so many times by a few different people (as I understand it), and now it strangely closely resembles the initial plan by NWSM, but is tens of thousands of dollars overbudget.
Basically, it's a sh*t situation and we've begun doing up Admiral. The changeroom block has been extended to include an undercover area which on game days means don't have to set up tents for the bar, sausage sizzle/canteen, weather protection. It also allows to have (again, on game days only) a storage area for all the gear we don't need on that day. As anyone who's been to Admiral on game day knows, all that unused gear on game day sits around the back of the sheds on the ground and looks unsightly. Everything still gets packed away into the changerooms once the days is over, but it's so much better now.
There will be more improvements to the ground in the coming years. Apparently it has to be done in stages.
As for the programmes, yes we know there wasn't any. We were disappointed by that too. We were told they were at North Beach ready to be picked up, so someone (I think it was our very own Joondalup_Giant in fact) went down there, but they had none either. I have since been told the guy who usually collects them from the WARL (someone from North Beach) was away on a juniors state trip, hence they weren't at North Beach. That's the only one I haven't got from 2009 so far! No matter.
