ESSENDONTo our members, families and supporters,
On Monday 29 June, residents put a series of questions to Moonee Valley City Council about the future of Ormond Park during public question time. We are grateful to everyone who lodged one. The Council’s answers raised more questions than they settled, and we think you should hear them, in Council’s own words.
The damage was caused by termites, and not covered by Council’s insurance
Asked whether it insured the pavilion and had lodged a claim, Council said:
“Council does hold property insurance covering the Ormond Park pavilion. However, the policy does not cover damage caused by termite infestation.”
Termite damage does not happen overnight. It develops over years, and it is detectable and preventable through routine inspection and treatment.
A building Council owns and is responsible for is being demolished over damage proper upkeep may well have prevented, with ratepayers footing the bill for potential demolition and all other related costs.
In a recent article in the Herald Sun, a Council spokesperson is quoted as saying “The council has an obligation to ensure that our facilities are safe, and that any investment in community facilities balances community outcomes with council’s responsibility for sound and sustainable financial management.”
We continue to investigate what actions Council took to fulfil their clearly stated obligations to ensure that the facilities they provided to our players at Ormond Park was safe.
Had the roof collapsed just one week earlier at the same time, the affected room would have been packed with our players and administrators who were conducting an apparel fitting on the day – yet another important function of our club that will no longer be able to be facilitated at a club home should this demolition come to pass.
Council’s own plan promised a replacement it has not delivered
Council pointed to its 2022 Soccer Strategy to justify moving soccer off Ormond Park. Its actual wording ties any discontinuation of soccer at the ground to first providing Essendon Royals replacement capacity elsewhere. On where that capacity would come from, Council said:
“There are lighting projects currently underway at Fairbairn Park and JH Allan Reserve which will unlock an additional three full-size fields to accommodate the training requirements of several clubs.”
We accept that new lighting adds training capacity. But listen to the wording: fields to meet the training requirements of several clubs. That is shared training time, not a home. Both grounds are already the homes of other Moonee Valley clubs, and the pavilions at those grounds belong to those clubs under Council’s own seasonal allocation model.
Our own Council fee letters show the Royals hold pavilion access at exactly one location, Cross Keys. There is no allocation at Fairbairn, and none at JH Allan, whose pavilion Council’s own 2022 Strategy rates as “poor condition with insufficient change, is not female friendly or DDA compliant.”
We note to our members that our club has still not received anything formal in writing to this stage with respect to a termination of the Ormond Park lease, nor where the hours for training and matches are expected to be replaced.
However, this answer suggests that the consideration that could be offered to the club is evening training slots on other clubs’ grounds, with at this stage no guarantee of access to change rooms of our own, in exchange for a year-round leased home.
Splitting our members across even more sites with nowhere to gather is not a good experience for the players and families who make up this club, and it is not what a club is.
What is being lost at Ormond Park is not green space. It is a home.
We have also seen commentary that the club’s home is really Cross Keys Reserve. Cross Keys is a vital part of our operation, but it is shared with Essendon Cricket Club and Strathmore Cricket Club, and it is not available to meet the many requirements we have outside the winter months for our community football programs.
Ormond Park represents a true and historic home of the club and one that plays a crucial function in our ability to deliver a wide range of football programs ot the community.
The grounds Council named are already full
Ormond Park is not a quiet ground. Council’s own Chief Executive described the playing field as “well-utilised” at the meeting, and she is right. Our juniors play around 95 matches there each season on a single pitch, alongside training through the week and our Kick-Starters program for our youngest players across the school terms. If the ground is taken, Council has to find a new home for every one of those fixtures.
The two grounds Council pointed to are already among the busiest soccer venues in Moonee Valley. JH Allan Reserve hosts around 87 soccer fixtures a season as the home of another local club, Moonee Ponds United. Fairbairn Park hosts close to 185 as the home of Avondale FC.
New lighting adds some hours, but these are not empty grounds waiting for us. Asking them to absorb another 95 fixtures, on top of what they already carry, moves the problem rather than solving it.
On Council’s own numbers, the club is already short of fields
The same 2022 strategy records that Essendon Royals is already facing a shortfall of one to two fields, that the grounds we use are over-used, and that the club needs six to seven full-sized equivalent fields.
Council has also already invested in this very ground. Its own strategy lists a $250,000 drainage and irrigation upgrade at Ormond Park among the capital projects it has completed there since 2015. Taking a ground away from a club its own plan says is already in deficit, after spending ratepayers’ money improving that very ground, runs directly against the plan.
And the queue keeps growing
This is not an abstract shortage. From the club’s own registration records this season: 829 players joined our waiting list because we could not offer them a place. 240 of them are children under 12. 103 of them are local kids who have never played club football anywhere, waiting for their first season. We already run more than a thousand participants across five borrowed grounds. That is the demand Council’s decision lands on.
Three per cent is the wrong measure
Council’s Chief Executive, Helen Sui, told the meeting:
“While the playing field at Ormond Park is well-utilised, it is a single junior-only soccer field. This field represents only approximately 3% of Moonee Valley’s overall soccer facility network.”
That figure measures land, not people, and it is the wrong way to weigh what is at stake. Three per cent of the network is the home of thirteen of our junior sides. It carries close to 95 junior matches a season, training most nights of the week, and our Kick-Starters program for our youngest players. Hundreds of local children pass through it every week. By any measure of use, rather than green space, and by Council’s own word, “well-utilised”, Ormond Park is nothing like 3%.
It is also 3% of a network Council’s own strategy says is already short of fields. When you are already in deficit, you cannot spare a field, however small it looks on a map. And the figure measures the playing surface, not the pavilion. The decision Council has made is to demolish a building, the only clubrooms and change rooms at the ground. You cannot reduce the loss of a community’s home to a percentage of grass.
Importantly, the decision on the pavilion does not mean the playing field itself needs to be lost.
Informed is not consulted
Asked why there had been no community consultation before such a significant decision, Council said:
“The engagement approach included discussions with club representatives to inform them of the decision.”
Being told what has been decided is not the same as being consulted on it. In February this year, Council formally paused a fully contracted lighting project at JH Allan Reserve to run a month of community consultation before deciding. We are asking for nothing more than the same process for a sixty-year community home.
Where we stand
We are not asking for special treatment. We are asking for the three things more than 1,000 people have now signed a petition for: put the repair out to open tender, hold off on demolition until that is done and considered in public, and keep the Ormond Park pitch for soccer.
The questions raised on 29 June deserve proper answers. We will keep pressing for them, and we will keep our members informed.
Sign and share the petition: app.essendonroyals.com.au/petition
Essendon Royals Soccer Club