FRANKSTON Bombers Football Club says the condition of its ground and the visitors' change rooms at Greg Beck Oval in Baxter are causing the club to be the laughing stock of the Mornington Peninsula Nepean Football League and the wider community.
For the past two years the club has been unsuccessfully asking Frankston Council to fix the ground's poor drainage and repair the change rooms.
The ground, named after Bombers stalwart Greg Beck, is derisively called the 'Greg Beck aquatic centre'. The visitors' rooms are called 'the shoebox'.
In the most recent letter to the council, club president Chris Sharman wrote that correspondence received from other clubs described conditions at the ground as toxic and a disgrace.
Sharman said drainage had always been poor, even in the drought. At the first sign of rain it becomes a quagmire.
Last week it looked like the aftermath of the Battle of Agincourt.
The club had not been able to train on the ground for the past eight weeks and is relying on the hospitality of Frankston Rovers who let the Bombers use Bruce Reserve in Frankston South.
Founded in 1887, Frankston Bombers is the oldest football club on the peninsula. It has won 18 premierships, including last year's Nepean Division flag. The club moved to Baxter in 1983.
It fields seniors, reserves, under-18s and colts, and recently, to improve its family focus, started netball, although it does not have courts at Baxter. That's another issue with the council.
Last year the council 'took on' the drainage problem.
"Drainage on the ground has been a problem, but we have located a few leaks in the system and have had them repaired so this may help next year," recreational development officer Nicole Conole emailed the club.
It doesn't appear to have worked. At the time the council said it would look into the problem of the change rooms.
Sharman has no grievance with the council staff who look after the ground. He says they are doing the best they can.
He says the club has spent almost $100,000 of its own money upgrading facilities over the past few years - new bar, kitchen, toilets, carpets, curtains, tables, chairs and painting.
But the major sore point with visiting clubs is their changing area. Complaints have been lodged with the Bombers, the MPNFL and now the council.
Most recently, Pearcedale Football Club president Steve Green wrote to the council's recreational development officer Troy Lyons. He described the rooms as deplorable.
"Two female trainers approached me on Saturday, July 24, expressing their concerns and discomfort and uneasiness at the rooms as a workplace."
He raised the matter with the Bombers but was told they were not in a position to do anything because the council controlled the facility. There was also no reply from the council.
Green said Frankston Bombers was a wonderful club but he would recommend to his committee that Pearcedale not play at Baxter next season unless things improved.
Dromana Football Club recently wrote to MPNFL operations manager Ian Benson complaining about the visitors' change rooms.
The players came in after playing in the quagmire "emitting an obnoxious odour" that made the rooms unhygienic and a health and safety problem. The hot water ran out and some players had to drive home to shower.
"By no stretch of the imagination could these rooms be deemed adequate or hygienic by a health department inspector," the club wrote.
It urged the league to take the matter up with the council. Benson told The Mail the matter had come to a head and the league would make a submission to the council.
Sharman told the council the club and the council were being held up to public ridicule.
The council states this year's capital works budget had money for designs for the refurbishment of the visitors' change rooms. It will consult with the club in "coming months".
Acting manager for assets John Williams said the boggy state of the ground, despite it being vertically drained three times since April, was largely due to it receiving 407millimetres of rain in the past five months, compared with the long-term median of less than 300millimetres.
There was $12,000 in the budget for upgrading of drainage pits, and the council was seeking a grant from Sport and Recreation Victoria to resurface the oval with warm-season grass.
Email a friend