Magazine - Skilled Park Slammed

By Editor in Football on 20th Aug 2009 15:00

A-League debut to forget at Skilled Park.

Less than 8,000 turned up to watch Gold Coast completely demolish fellow newbies the Fury 5-0 on a pitch that wouldn't have been out of place as a paddock on a dairy farm. The chopped up surface had little effect on Smeltz, who fired in four goals, the second-best ever haul in an A-League match, and kept his team's perfect record intact after two rounds.

However, the concern remains that while Gold Coast's debut on the pitch could not have been brighter, off the pitch, there have more than their fair share of teething problems. United supremo Clive Palmer and coach Miron Bleiberg ranted and raved about not getting to host their first game in the new competition, but given the volume of empty seats at Skilled Park and the chunks that were being cut out of the ground during the match, FFA would have appeared to have pulled the right rein playing the opener against Brisbane in Australia's finest rectangular stadium in Suncorp Stadium.

Pitch issues certainly aren't anything new to the A-League. A match between the Victory and the Roar last season was on the verge of being called off after the then Telstra Dome pitch had failed to recover from a rave staged there days before, while Newcastle copped criticism for the standard of its pitch during the Asian Champions League campaign because it had been chopped up by rugby league games.

But both of these instances were the result of dual use in the immediate days before the game. In this case, the Titans, the ground's other main tenant, hadn't played a rugby league match at Skilled Park for 15 days prior. Gold Coast has had just 1.2 mm of rain in the whole month of August, so the prevailing weather was not a factor.

That only leaves the possibility that the surface suffered from either poor management or overuse in training, or a combination of both. Regardless, the surface was barely a proper standard for mud-wrestling, let alone A-League football. One wag joked that Smeltz's penalty for his second goal was taken with a sand wedge.

As for the crowd, well Bleiberg is a master of spin, but even he had trouble trying to up-sell the fact that such a low number turned out for the club's first-ever home match. It was just as well Smeltz and co put on a show, or it could have been a complete disaster.

Source & More: sportal.com.au

Read more articles in Football, by Editor or from August 2009.