AT 11.15 on Tuesday morning decades worth of Wagga rugby league history came crashing to the ground.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
One nudge of an excavator spelled the end for the Schnelle Harmon grandstand – the 800-seat facility that once roared with chants of spectators.
Just a handful of people witnessed the demolition of the once-loved Wagga icon.
Kooringal man Neville Taber arrived shortly after it came down and said it was a sad day for the city.
“It was a sad day when it closed, it’s sadder to think the grandstand has come down and the Eric Weissel Oval is not being used as a football field,” he said.
Developer Chris Nash, of Nash Bros Constructions, described the demolition as “graceful”. “The thing with a structure like this is the braces do all the work. As soon as you ease those braces off, it’s like a deck of cards coming down,” he said.
Mr Nash said the debris would be crushed and recycled, mixed down into road base, as the new development readies.
"Probably in the next couple of months we’ll be getting stuck into some building works, which will be good for the town,” Mr Nash said.
On its busiest day Eric Weissel Oval hosted a record 12,000 people for the Australia-Papua New Guinea clash in 1988.
