Roy Masters | March 14, 2008
The Silvertails are crying fibro. A miniscule $1.44 million of government funding for ground improvements over the past 10 years - from a total outlay of over $900m - has been directed to the Sea Eagles' home ground, Brookvale Oval.
"The people of the peninsula deserve better" says a submission to government by former Prime Minister Bob Hawke, who has been enlisted to win funds to upgrade a ground described by its own patron as "definitely the worst in the NRL".
Kerry Sibraa, Manly's patron and a Labor senator in the federal parliament for 17 years, is appalled at the discriminatory treatment of the NRL club, which sits in an electorate that is taken for granted by state and federal Liberal governments and deemed unwinnable by Labor governments.
"From 1997 to 2007, there has been over $900m of state and federal government funds spent on grounds where NRL games are played, yet the home of the 2007 NRL premiership runners-up has received only $1.44m," Sibraa said.
"We got $400,000 from the state government for an electronic scoreboard in 2004 when [Premier] Morris Iemma was sports minister and $1m from the federal government in 2006 when [local federal member] Tony Abbott got us ground lighting.
"We expected $9m for a new grandstand in the lead-up to the last federal election but because the promise was made during the caretaker period of government, we missed out."
Compounding Manly's anger has been the likely flow of $11m in grants to their traditional fibro foes, Wests Tigers. "I nearly choked when I read that Campbelltown will receive $8m in federal funding and Leichhardt $3m," Sibraa said. "They play only three games at each ground and now they want more."
Asked whether the Sea Eagles were the victims of being located in a safe conservative seat, wooed by neither Liberal nor Labor, Sibraa said: "There is no doubt about that. We've been taken for granted at both state and federal level."
Sibraa pointed out that Manly's opponents tomorrow night, the Sharks, have done well from the political influence of former treasurer Peter Costello being aligned with the now-retired local federal member, Bruce Baird.
Furthermore, Manly's geographic position means the Sea Eagles can't accept the $2m guarantees on offer to other NRL clubs who disappear into the giant vortex at Homebush Bay that is ANZ Stadium.
South Sydney, the Bulldogs, St George Illawarra and Wests Tigers will all play the majority of their games at ANZ Stadium this season and Parramatta are considering a move there.
"We don't have the option of playing out of Homebush because we are not on a train line," Sibraa said. "How do our fans get access to it?"
Traditionally, Manly fans don't travel to away games, meaning the only way their dollars can enrich the code is by the NRL club building its proposed eastern grandstand.
"We did have a very good meeting with Morris Iemma and we expect to get some money in the next state budget," Sibraa said. "Warringah Council said they will match it.
"David Gallop [NRL chief executive], Grant Mayer [Sea Eagles CEO] and myself went to see the Premier and he said Brookvale was his No.1 priority and Campbelltown number two. Now, it would seem, Campbelltown is No.1 but we are still confident the Premier will deliver."
With Eels chief executive Denis Fitzgerald and chairman Alan Overton having uneasy relations with the Parramatta Stadium Trust and considering a relocation to Homebush Bay, the Panthers, Sharks, Roosters and Sea Eagles could be the only Sydney NRL clubs left playing in their neighbourhoods.
The result is match-day traffic travelling ludicrously in opposite directions, like the Los Angeles freeways in peak hour.
Silvertails living near Santa Monica travel into their city offices in the morning, while Latinos leave inner-city suburbs for work as domestic helps and gardeners on the beaches.
In the late afternoon, both groups make the return journeys, with traffic jams in both directions twice a day.
Tonight, Souths and Roosters fans will leave the fringe of Sydney's CBD and the east for Homebush Bay in the west, while Dragons and Tigers fans will travel on Sunday from the south and west to the Sydney Football Stadium in the heart of the city.
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