Magazine - Windy Hill Grand Plan

By Editor in A.F.L on 10th Nov 2009 10:00

Essendon Football Club has unveiled a multi-million-dollar proposal to expand Windy Hill to boost the Bombers’ chances of winning an AFL premiership.

The AFL club’s new chief executive, Ian Robson, said the Bombers would create a “state-of-the-art high-performance facility equal to any club in the AFL”. Mr Robson said the plan included expanding the Windy Hill Oval to about the size of the MCG. “The football team is being strangled in the current environment,” Mr Robson said. “To be in the same position in two years’ time will be unacceptable.

As part of the revamp, Essendon Bowls Club and Essendon Cricket Club would need to move out. Mr Robson said there was not enough room for the AFL club and local clubs to train. But the clubs, who found out about the revamp last Friday, won’t budge until there is more detail and members agree.

Essendon Bowls Club president Ron Hare said the proposed move came as a “shock”, but moving the bowls club was “a long way off”. “The football club have put a bit of speed on the move and they’d like it to be over and done within three years,” he said.  “If we can better ourselves, we’d be foolish not to look at it. But if the club has to relocate, it’s got to be a site in Essendon so it can retain its identity.”

Mr Robson said the club was being “upfront and transparent” with the local clubs. He said the club was community minded and had given $1.7 million to local sports clubs. “It is not our intent to leave any club languishing,” he said.

Under the revamp, existing facilities would become a community centre, community sports programs would be expanded and the Victorian branch of the Australian Paralympic Committee would be based at the site.

Mr Robson said he did not know how much the revamp would cost but similar developments at AFL clubs had cost up to $20 million.

Essendon Cricket Club president Simon Tobin said the club had been in negotiations with EFC and Moonee Valley Council about a previous proposal to move to Fairbairn Park in Ascot Vale. Mr Tobin said the club would not make a decision until they had more information.

Source & More: moonee-valley-leader.whereilive.com.au

Read more articles in A.F.L, by Editor or from November 2009.