Rabbitohs Home In On North Sydney
By
BRAD WALTER
SYDNEY MORNING HERALD - 30/11/2004
South Sydney, the NRL's oldest-surviving club, is set to abandon Aussie
Stadium as its home ground and move to North Sydney Oval in a deal
worth up to $1million a year to the Rabbitohs.
While Souths officials still hope Redfern Oval can be redeveloped, a
meeting of club supporters tonight will be told about the benefits of
shifting home games across the harbour.
Rabbitohs chief executive Shane Richardson last night said the deal
with North Sydney Council included the flexibility to return to Redfern
should the proposal for a new stadium come to fruition, while offering
the club significantly more revenue from home games than the SCG Trust,
which controls Aussie Stadium.
"Even if the plans for Redfern Oval were approved tomorrow it would
still take four or five years to build so I'm more concerned about
trying to do a stadium deal for 2006 and I've got to say that North
Sydney Oval have come up with a fantastic offer for us to play out of
there," Richardson said.
"It's quite phenomenal really, there's a difference of about $800,000
per year compared to Aussie Stadium. And from our point of view, we're
a club that has to rely on gates for our profit as we don't have a
leagues club supporting us. So we've got to make rational decisions
about what's best for our bottom line.
"The deal we have with Aussie Stadium is nowhere near good enough.
We're going to play there next year because we've got a contract to do
so, but it doesn't look good for them for the years after that because
the deal we are able to do with North Sydney Oval is far, far
superior."
Richardson said the idea of moving full-time to North Sydney Oval
followed the success of this year's round-24 clash with Manly at the
picturesque ground.
Attracting a crowd of 14,855 for the match, the Rabbitohs made $70,000
by playing at North Sydney - more than they did for the round-16 clash
with St George Illawarra at the SCG, which drew 23,741 fans.
In addition, Souths would have the ability to earn revenue at North
Sydney Oval from the sale of food, beer and merchandise as well as
increased signage rights, while it is understood that North Sydney
Council would fund the upgrade of facilities.
"It's a decision we will make in consultation with our fans but at the
end of the day we've got to make a profit from our games to ensure we
are able to stay alive and obviously there are a whole lot of positives
about North Sydney Oval," Richardson said.
"Transport-wise it's easy to access and from our point of view North
Sydney is the third biggest business district in Australia, and the
council there is very, very keen to help us out, which is not the
message we're getting from Sydney City Council."
The club's plans to redevelop Redfern Oval nosedived yesterday when the
Herald revealed the State Government was considering turning the space
into a village green.
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