Leichhardt Oval incident sparks internal investigation

Leichhardt Oval incident sparks internal investigation

By WENDY BACON and AMBER GRIFFIN

The Inner West Council (IWC) has declared that Leichhardt Oval is “a safe football venue” that can be used for games this weekend. According to an IWC spokesperson that the area where a stand collapsed last Sunday will be “off limits to the public.”

The accident resulted in thirty spectators tumbling just under two metres onto the concrete in front of a crowd of over 15,000 people.

Paramedics assessed victims on the scene and luckily there were no life-threatening injuries.

Ali Cant was in attendance of the game during the collapse. Cant’s 19-year-old son, Joseph was part of the pileup and said four or five young men were badly injured. “There were a few concussions, and Joe’s mate had broken his scapula,” Cant told Nine News.

The frightening scenes during the game between private boys’ schools Saint Ignatius’ College and St Joseph’s College were caught on video. Dozens of rugby spectators were seen jumping in celebration of a try and seconds later the railing gave way and they tumbled onto the concrete path below.

The Inner West Council is responsible for the safety and maintenance of the Oval. Immediately after the accident the Inner West Council Mayor Darcy Byrne, who is on leave, responded, telling the Sydney Morning Herald, “The footage is shocking … We are making the site safe and will fully investigate the safety risks this raises.”

The poor state of the Oval was already an issue before the incident. After the incident, Wests Tigers chairman Lee Hagipantelis said, “We’ve been saying for some time that the state of the facility at Leichhardt is substandard, it’s third-world, and potentially dangerous, what we saw was the fulfilment of that potential.”

West Tigers chairman Lee Hagipantelis said that he voiced his concerns over the state of Leichhardt Oval. Photo: West Tigers/Facebook

Hagipantelis’s comment suggests that he and others had already expressed concerns about the poor state of the Oval. This raises questions about what actions were taken in response to his concerns. In order to probe this question, City Hub asked the Inner West Council about recent safety inspections and what form Byrne’s promised investigation of the serious incident will take.

From the answers we received, it seems the investigation will not be independent of those who were responsible for maintaining the safety of the oval. A spokesperson said, an investigation is being “undertaken by council property, building, facilities and Workplace Health and Safety teams”.

City Hub also asked about recent safety checks and was told by the spokesperson that maintenance staff carry out an annual inspection. Spectator areas are also checked prior to and after every game. The last annual inspection was carried out on 3rd May, this year and did not note any safety concerns with the area near the collapsed railing. Questions about whether we could see these reports remained unanswered.

The railing that collapsed is attached to a men’s toilet area that Council had already decided needed building works. The IWC spokesperson told us that in October 2021, Council decided that this area would be renovated at a cost of $1 million. These works will not take place until after this rugby season in the Summer of 2022/3.

Questions about whether the results of the internal investigation will be reported to  Councillors remain unanswered. If this does not happen, the public will never know what caused the accident.

Leichhardt Oval part of much bigger political game

Liechhardt Oval and the West Tigers football team are issues on which the Inner West Mayor Darcy Byrne is passionately focused. The incident followed only days after he used his Facebook page to attack Premier Dominic Perrottet for reneging on promises to grant $50m to Leichhardt Oval for restoration works. Like Byrne, Perrottet is a supporter of the West Tigers whose traditional home was Leichhardt Oval.

Last October, Perrottet said that he would be pushing for more funds for suburban ovals including possibly Leichhardt Oval. He continued to backgrounding the media suggesting that his government would grant $250m to NRL ovals. Two weeks ago, he announced that this money would instead go to reconstruction work in flood-affected areas.

NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet has come under fire after going back on his promise to fund restoration projects for Leichhardt Oval. Photo: Dom Perrottet/Facebook

The Premier’s latest decision has led to a major political tussle between the Australian Rugby League chairman Peter V’landys and the NSW government in which Leichhardt Oval is a minor issue. The tension between the government and Rugby League has now spread further to a conflict between the powerful South Sydney Rabbitohs and the Perrottet government. The Rabbitohs want to move back to Moore Park to the soon-to-be-completed Allianz stadium away from Olympic Park in Homebush, which they argue has also not received enough funding.

The LNP government received a lot of negative publicity about its expensive teardown and rebuild of Sydney Stadium in the lead-up to the 2019 election. With promises of more funding to suburban ovals, Perrottet would have been hoping that stadium funding would have been a political positive for him in the 2023 election. But with thousands still homeless after the floods, funding stadiums does not have a good look even if backing out of promises means angering rugby leagues bosses. Perrottet is also under attack for not reneging on a $300 fund for Penrith stadium in Sydney’s far West where Stuart Ayres, who has recently been forced to resign as a cabinet minister, will be struggling to hold his seat next March.

There is no doubt that the campaign for state funding for Leichhardt Oval has fallen foul of  a series of rolling crises enveloping the Perrottet government. But the politics of stadiums and the need for a large funding boost for Leichhardt Oval should not be confused with the current maintenance of Leichhardt Oval.

In May, Byrne said that if there was no money in the NSW Budget for the Oval, “it won’t be tenable for games to be played there at all.” Anyone reading his threat would thought that the Oval is in a very poor state indeed. There was no money for the Oval in the June 2022 budget.

Byrne was furious and personalised the issue with a strongly worded IWC media release which stated: “Dominic Perrottet is happy to spend $300 million in Stuart Ayres seat, to build a shiny, new Panthers Stadium for the exclusive use of one club. But the Wests Tigers, and all of the other men’s and women’s Rugby League, Soccer and Rugby Union teams who regularly use Leichhardt Oval get nothing. The Premier likes to make a big deal of being a Tigers fan but given his abysmal record of failing to support our spiritual home at Leichhardt, it seems his alleged support for the Club is just a charade. If Dom Perrottet is brave enough to leave the corporate box and come on to the Wayne Pearce Hill at the Tigers next home game, he’s going to get a very frosty reception from the fans.”

The area has been tapped off to the public after the incident. Photo: 7NEWS Sydney/Facebook

Independent Councillor John Stamolis is wary of Leichhardt Oval being used as a political football in efforts to obtain funding for a major upgrade. Right now, he says that the “Council has full care, control, and management over Leichhardt Oval. Any issues of quality and public safety are the responsibility of Council…Labor Mayor Darcy Byrne may wish to have a big stoush with the NSW Liberals to make this (Leichhardt Oval) an elite stadium, but our primary responsibility is to deliver a safe venue so that the public enjoy their footy.” he told City Hub.

“The absolute focus is to ensure that this venue is safe and enjoyable and it is Council’s role to ensure that. The big party political campaigns can cause a loss of focus.”

It is also true that the Inner West Council is a long way off relying on the NSW government for a major funding boost. Indeed, it seems that a plan for how any such funding would be spent is only a work in progress. According to an IWC spokesperson, Council “is preparing a master plan for the Oval that will be used to source grant funding.”

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