Taking the " game " out of sport !

The New  South Wales government has started an enquiry to report on the merit of requiring all the sporting codes to play  matches at several central sporting stadiums.   If that plan was adopted, the use of regional sporting facilities would be abandoned,  saving the funds needed to constantly upgrade them to a required elevated standard.

It seems to be a case of economics coming into conflict with the very reason that various sports started in the first place.

NRL, AFL, Soccer - all started when a few locals started kicking a ball around and formed a team, and then challenged a similar group in the next suburb.   Family and friends formed the original club supporters, and these games were usually played on a bare paddock with very few facilities.

Numbers grew - and chook raffles and local fund raising added a grandstand and change rooms, and bit by bit the iconic teams that we follow today emerged and those local games became a national competition.   But when it came to basics, each team had a local identity.   They represented the suburb where they started - and support was both parochial - and intense.    The team name had a strong local connection - hence " The Dragons ", " The Tigers ", " The Sea Eagles " - preceded by the name of the originating suburb.

Today, those local teams have become a billion dollar business.  Maybe they have out grown the small playing fields in the suburbs which are their home base.  Maybe the time is approaching when all games should be concentrated in a stadium providing massive seating for spectators - and that is usually in a central part of a capital city.

It would mean the end of both Kogarah oval and Wollongong's WIN Stadium for the St George Illawarra Dragons, and with that loss would go the local identity that drew fans to the game in the first place.

Wollongong is a separate city.  It is not Sydney, and if all Dragons games were to be played in a central Sydney stadium there is a very good chance that bums on stadium  seats would translate into bums on living room chairs watching the game on television.   It would be a further extension of the dilution of local character that has plagued regional sport.

Wollongong once fielded it's own team - " The Steelers " in the national NRL competition.  Pressure to reduce the numbers and enhance size saw that team forcibly merged with the Sydney St George Dragons, and playing venues were equally divided between Kogarah oval in Sydney and WIN Stadium in Wollongong.   Now it is possible that both will be abandoned - in favour of a ultra large central Sydney stadium.

There is a certain logic in concentrating money to provide a small number of mega venues to accommodate big fan numbers and this seems to be the way sport is going in overseas competitions, but it comes at a price.

Once local identity is lost, then so too goes the spirit that draws spectators to home grounds on days of pouring rain and howling cold winds.   Cost saving is a two edged sword.     Some people want to site the Olympics on a never changing venue to spare individual world cities the crippling costs of holding the games.

That may happen - and Australian sport may lose it's local identity if this plan comes to fruition - but if so the old games that we knew and loved will be replaced by  new competitions where distance makes television the prime watching medium !