A-League football clubs these days comprise multiple teams and require multiple facilities. A club’s physical infrastructure influences everything from club culture to team performance and after 20 years of A-League football many of the clubs have been forward thinking in their infrastructure arrangements.
Where does your club rank in terms of its facilities, and where can it improve?
Let’s take a look at Brisbane Roar.
Current Set Up
Brisbane Roar have suffered arguably the most headache inducing facility situation in the A-League, often due to the club’s own shortsightedness. As it stands despite an agreement to train at Ballymore this season the ALM team appear to be training at Meakin Park (which is the home of Football Queensland) due to issues with the Ballymore facility. The ALW team also train at QSAC. The NPL and Youth teams appear to be training at Meakin Park.
In terms of home grounds, the Brisbane Roar also use multiple venues. The ALM side has returned to Suncorp Stadium this season but also played a game at Ballymore. The ALW side was based out of Ballymore. The NPL side appears to be playing its home games out of Meakin Park. As you can see the current situation is far from idea… which is why we will be instead assessing the…
Future Set Up
As soon as July 2024 Brisbane Roar is expecting to more all its teams and administration into the ‘City of Moreton Bay Football Centre of Excellence and Moreton City Excelsior Football Precinct’, of for the purposes of this article, we will refer to this simply as the CoE. The CoE will feature five training fields and an administration building. Should this arrangement last more than a couple of years this should be a game changer for the Roar and allow the club to build a one club culture. From a match day perspective, it is expected that the new facility will host NPL matches, while ALW games would be expected to be held in Ballymore and ALM matches would be expected to be held at Suncorp.
History of Set Up
Brisbane have a long and complicated facility history.
- 2005 – The club was originally based at the home of their former owners at Lions Stadium
- 2008 – The club moved to Ballymore after the Lions ownership collapsed, the club also maintained some administration activity at Perry Park
- 2016 – The club moved to Griffith University
- 2016 – The club announced a future move to Logan
- 2017 – The club returned to Ballymore
- 2018 – The club moved to a purpose built facility in Logan
- 2020 – The club left Logan after a dispute over a water bill and moved to the Gold Coast Sports Precinct
- 2023 – The club returned to Ballymore
- 2023 – The club moved its training base to QSAC and then again to Meakin Park due to issues at Ballymore
- 2024 – The club intends to move to purpose built facility in Brendale
What can we say about the above? In some ways the Roar were set up to fail, whereas prior NSL participants the Brisbane Strikers had their own facilities the Roar were forced to rent the giant Land Park. This contributed to the instability of the Lion’s ownership and ultimately saw an end to their involvement with the club.
Although there was some stabilization in the next few years after the Bakrie Group secured full ownership the club’s facility situation seemed to deteriorate. Poor stakeholder management and short sightedness has seen the Roar end relationships with Rugby Union, City Councils, and Universities. It appears only the new Australian management team, fronted by former player Kaz Patafta, has been able to bring back a little hope to the club.
The new Brendale CoE will be a gamechanger, but it represents the Roar hopping onto a project that was already in the works, and there is no public information about any sort of long term lease. Even then, the Roar would need to stick to their word and solve conflicts as they arise unlike what happened previously in Logan… To think, all this drama is just related to their training venues!
The Roar have also been challenged by their home ground situation. The ALW and NPL teams have played in various facilities across Brisbane, but their ALM team have been quite publicly challenged. The long term arrangement with Suncorp Stadium has always been financially damaging. This has become even worse since the club’s crowds have fallen from 14k to around 7k.
The club has explored multiple alternatives, including proposing a new stadium in 2020, and moving games to Dolphin Stadium for three seasons. The latter move was initially praised, but the remoteness of the venue saw crowds fall further and damaged fan engagement. This recent season the club returned to Suncorp and also held a test match at Ballymore, which was poorly attended. As Suncorp faces increased interest from touring music concerts, the Roar is no longer even a priority tenant, and it is clear that the long term future of the Roar’s home ground is still up in the air.
Assessment of Set Up, Gaps and Opportunities
In terms of training, the Roar’s new CoE should tick all the boxes. The club however needs to establish a long term operating lease, and this time stick to it! The home ground situation is obviously the club’s biggest gap though. Ballymore is too isolated, Perry Park is too derelict, Dolphin Stadium is too remote, Suncorp is too large and QSAC amazingly seems to have all of these problems at once.
With an Olympics on the way TBG sees that the Roar has two practical long term options:
- Secure a financially beneficial deal with Suncorp Stadium and look to return attendances to previous levels
- Lobby hard for a redeveloped Perry Park
Notes and considerations
Brisbane has a massive grounds issue, especially for football. Ironically though, the State of Queensland has one of the best selection of regional stadiums across Australia. This is the nature of Queensland, a more decentralised state with an almost cavalier attitude to politics and economic development which has contributed to the deaths of two A-League clubs, stalled the development of potential NSD clubs and left even the Roar on the brink.
The Olympics stadium situation has been laughable, and despite three separate AFL proposals coming out of recent discussions, the construction of a boutique AFL venue already, and the redevelopment of a Rugby facility – football (an actual Olympic sport) has been left without a proper home.
Although a redevelopment of Perry Park appears obvious, the lobbying journey for it has been nauseating. Not only is the option incredibly obvious but the only stakeholders who seem to be ignoring it are the most important ones… State Government, and the Brisbane Strikers! Allegations of competing property plans by the Strikers have actually hampered lobbying efforts from the Grassroots.
Well, at least there’s the Brendale CoE coming up.
Ratings based on future set up
Overall Ranking: 6th out of 12
Overall Rating: B
Assuming Brisbane make Brendale a good home and play their matches at Suncorp the club actually has a very solid facilities arrangement in place for next season. Considering the club’s facility history though, these are big assumptions!
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