How the west would win - Cup means new stadium
ROY MASTERS
March 22, 2010
SYDNEY will have a 45,000-seat rectangular stadium at Blacktown, providing Australia wins the bid to host football's World Cup, delivering a serious rebuff to the AFL's expansion plans in the west of the city.
The new ground will be built in Blacktown's green Olympic precinct, next to the baseball and softball diamonds used during the 2000 Sydney Games and close to the AFL's western Sydney training ground, built to accommodate 10,000 spectators.
The AFL has been lobbying Football Federation Australia and the NSW and federal governments to support a redevelopment of Sydney Showground at Sydney Olympic Park as a World Cup venue and its later conversion to an AFL ground, which would be home to the Team GWS AFL club and new FFA team, Sydney Rovers, both set to enter their national competitions in 2012.
Instead, Blacktown will be one of the 12 stadiums listed in FFA's bid book submitted to FIFA on May 14. An FFA spokesman said: ''FFA's preferred option is a new stadium at Blacktown, rather than a redevelopment at Homebush. Blacktown, not Homebush, will be listed as one of Australia's 12 stadiums.''
The AFL has therefore suffered a double rebuff, being denied a home ground for its western Sydney club courtesy of the taxpayer and forced to train in the shadows of a jewel built for rugby league, rugby union and football on open-space greenland.
The Blacktown stadium would be scaled back to accommodate 30,000-35,000 after the World Cup. While the Blacktown stadium is contingent on Australia winning the bid to host the 2018 or 2022 World Cup, there is growing confidence Australia is favourite for the 2022 tournament. The two main rivals, the US and Qatar, have problems.
The US hosted the 1994 World Cup, which failed to ignite a boom in the sport in the world's richest country. Furthermore, US visa restrictions in a post-September 11 world would make it extremely difficult for some of the family of the world's most popular game to gain accreditation.
In Qatar it can be as hot as 51 degrees in July, and it would be forced to build 12 air-conditioned stadiums and training facilities.
Australia is perceived as a ''developing region'' of the world game, and FIFA has a record of awarding World Cups to countries nascent economically, or in playing numbers. South Africa will host this year's World Cup and Brazil the 2014 tournament, and Japan and South Korea staged the 2002 event. Many FFA officials privately concede Australia has lost the 2018 race to England, the nation that invented the game.
However, should Australia win the 2022 show, it is an opportunity for Sydney to wrest the title of ''sporting capital of Australia'' from Melbourne, the city that has awarded itself the status of sporting capital of the known universe.
Sydney would have three World Cup venues - ANZ Stadium at Homebush Bay, the Sydney Football Stadium and the Blacktown site - compared with Melbourne's sole site, the Melbourne Cricket Ground.
The AFL chief executive, Andrew Demetriou, has barred FIFA use of Etihad Stadium, a 52,000-seat, roofed facility in Melbourne's Docklands. The AFL has a 25-year lease on the stadium, owning it in 2022, and it insists on playing there during the June-July World Cup period.
While the FFA refuses to publicly criticise the AFL for its intransigence over Etihad, it admits it will disadvantage Victorians who will see only four or five World Cup games at the MCG and low-interest pool games in Geelong, which would be redeveloped if the bid was successful. The 85,000-seat ANZ stadium in Sydney would almost certainly be chosen for the biggest show on earth, the FIFA World Cup final.
The NRL has been more co-operative than the AFL in accommodating the FFA's wishes, although a stadium at Blacktown is not its preferred site in the compensation packages the major codes expect for disruptions to their seasons.
A new stadium in the south-western growth corridor past Fairfield would have better suited rugby league development plans.
