WAGGA City Wanderers have expressed their frustration they are powerless to prevent the public playing on Gissing Oval with their home base ruled out of action for a few weeks due to damage.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Given the venue is listed as a public park, council doesn't lock the facility which makes it impossible to keep casual players off the surface.
The venue has suffered some damage to the goal mouth areas, and council has advised the Wanderers the ground will be unavailable for a few weeks while it is repaired.
Wagga City is awaiting approval on their back to training plan from Wagga City Council and Capital Football, which they hope will occur this week.
The Wanderers are already a week behind their National Premier League Two rivals in Canberra after the ACT government officially allowed training in groups of ten to resume on May 14.
They hope to be back at training by as early as this week, and have their fingers crossed Gissing will be ready to host games by the competition's planned restart in mid-July.
"I imagine the local community is playing games on it every single day now that we're not training, and it's just chewing everything up," Wanderers president Brendan Flanagan said.
"Until we get on par with other codes who can all have a ground that gets locked, we're going to continue to have this issue.
"We bring interstate teams to town every second week here and we have to play on a public park, in effect, no other code is asked to do that.
"It's probably getting more use now than we're on it because it's open slather. I hope we don't start playing for a few weeks because it now has to be repaired so we've got a ground able to play on, through no fault of our own.
"I'm hoping (training is approved) this week. The ACT clubs have already had a week's training under their belt and we're a week behind.
The Wanderers also confirmed via social media that some player and coaches connected to the club have been observed training on the damaged areas, and reminded members that no Wanderers training is allowed to occur yet.
"I'm just reiterating to our players, especially now restrictions seem to be relaxing that we're still not allowed to train," Flanagan said.
"They can still go and train in small groups, that's completely fine, but they can't wear our gear because the public perception at least gets blurred, and as a club we're not running any training until we go through the right channels."
READ MORE
