I only just got home from the game a little while ago at Allianz Stadium and, quite frankly, outside of the game itself, a lot of the "features" trumpeted publicly about the new stadium are complete and utter bs!
Firstly the publicly stated claim of "all seats are under cover". After what I saw an experienced tonight my response is "yeah under cover of a roof which allows the rain to get under it and soak every seat and row in the bowl area on the western side!" When I arrived at the ground around 5.30 pm and took my seat in Bay 15, which is smack on the 30 metre line on the western side at the Paddington end of the ground, it was sprinkling. As I sat down I could literally feel the rain hitting me lightly in the face when I looked up, and hitting my mobile when I took it out of my pocket. We had a number of light showers during the NRLW match and it was noticeable that everyone in my bay was getting wet, only reason we didn't move is that it was relatively light.
However when I went to go and get some food at halftime in the NRLW match, as I walked up to the concourse I noticed every seat had drops of water on them, and so did the floor of every row. I was approximately 8 rows from the front of the fence, and everyone I spoke to in the rows behind me said they got wet when it rained. Had it rained heavily we would have gotten drenched. I took some photos on my phone and a video too as evidence. I'll post them after I get some sleep.
Thankfully there was no rain during the match itself.
The second issue, the food. All the promises about the "great" options available and how everything would be fresh. Again when my mate and I went to get food, the store with burgers, chips, hotdogs and drinks had queues snaking out of the food stall and well into the concourse. You had to wait ages for them to actually cook anything. Hence as that store was so full, there was a mexican themed store next to it which had a small queue, so that is where we went.
It had as options to buy (that I can recall): fish/beef brisket/vegetarian tacos, corn chips with salsa, vegetarian bowls and chicken burritos. It was set up with warmers with what was supposed to be available supposed to be ready for you to grab and go. Thing is when we walked in, there were heaps of fish tacos, which they kept adding to as I was there, 1 beef brisket taco, some serves of the corn chips and a couple of the vege bowls. Chicken burritos? None and guess what I and many others wanted? Yep the chicken burrito.
So a number of us were waiting for burritos to be made and served so we could take them and pay for them. We had a Merivale marshall ask us what we were waiting for as, by this time I was second in the queue and there were eight people all up waiting for burritos, and we all said burritos. She then spoke to the staff behind the counter and said we'd get them soon. She then came back at least another two times and asked us the same question and gave us the same response.
After what I timed as an approximate 10 minute (or slightly more) wait from when we walked into the store, the staff finally served us two burritos. Yep, two! So the guy in front of me took one and I got the other.
As soon as I picked it up I knew there was a problem as, even allowing for its paper wrapping the burrito, I could feel virtually zero heat coming from the burrito. By the time I'd returned to my seat, the NRLW match had already started its second half, and when I started eating my burrito I found that whilst it was tasty it was, at best, lukewarm. Yes, LUKEWARM! I mean I could have accepted that if it had been sitting there under a warmer for a while, but I won't when it had come straight from the cooking staff (you could see the assembly line from the outside of the counter). Considering the wind that was blowing making you feel cold, eating lukewarm food didn't really help. My mate came back a couple of minutes after I did with his burrito and his was lukewarm also.
The final kicker came when, after fulltime, we went to use the mens toilet on the western concourse which is located not far to the side of our seating bay. I only had to use a urinal as I only had to pee. My mate needed to use a cubicle (say no more). As I was using the urinal, one of the other guys mentioned to me that the toilet cubicle were literally filthy. I didn't realise how bad they were until, after I'd finished, washed my hands, dried them, and walked outside to wait for my mate to find him already there waiting for me.
I asked him how did he finish so quickly. He replied he didn't use the cubicle as, when he went into one, he found it was so blocked up that water and fecal matter was flowing over the top of the toilet bowl and was all over the floor of the cubicle. He said he checked a few of the others and they were all in the same state. He said they were literally unusable.
Now I've been to a lot of rugby league games over my 50 odd years, and I do not ever recall a situation at a NSWRL/ARL/NRL First grade venue where the toilets have been that bad they could not be physically used.
I'm just astounded that, 34 years after the original SFS opened in 1988, with great statements about how all the seats there were protected from wet weather, that the exact same claims and mistakes have been made with this one.
I am seriously considering whether I intend to renew my season tickets with the Roosters as I now have seats at the new stadium whichb are literally in a worse position, view wise, and less protected from the rain than the old SFS. The place is a complete crock of manure.
Also on a final note in relation to the bowl seating, the incline they are on is way to gentrle and nowhere near as steep as similar seating at Commbank Stadium. Hence if you sit neare the front, like where I was, you really can't see the far side of the field at all. It is a complete disgrace!
