Flooding woes for the Albury Hotspurs Soccer Club are hoped to be eased when their pitch is resurfaced through a joint federal and local government project.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Farrer MP Sussan Ley has announced a $250,000 contribution to Albury Council's plans to upgrade Aloysius, Haydon and Alexandra parks.
"Both council and the federal government are committing a total of just over $500,000, about half each, to upgrade the playing surfaces," she said.
"Our commitment in our Sports 2030 initiative was to support communities and their playing fields."
Acting Albury mayor Amanda Cohn said council wanted to minimise disruption for sporting clubs, with a timeframe for works yet to be decided.
In other news:
"The upgrades mean the playing surfaces will be able to take a bit more wear and tear and hopefully a bit more use in winter as well," she said.
Aloysius Park will be stripped and re-leveled, with sub-surface drainage to be installed underneath a new couch grass playing surface.
Hotspurs president Brad Howard said flooding had been an issue there in previous years.
"There's a flood mitigation stream nearby, so the grounds do cop a fair whack in wet periods," he said.
"We have a lot of home games early in the season, so if we have a better surface we could potentially spread our home games out more across the season."
Drainage systems will also be installed at Haydon and Alexandra parks, and there will be minor surface upgrades.
The federal government contribution is included in the budget under Sport 2030 funding, but is separate to round three of the community sport infrastructure program, which is yet to be announced.
Mr Howard said the resurfacing had been on the cards for some time and the next step for the club would be new rooms.
"We have one of the largest arrays of female footballers in AWFA and we haven't got any dedicated female change-rooms, so that's high on the agenda," he said.
The government announced at the end of March details on a $150 million change room and swimming facilities fund would be released later this year.
