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An NRL team in the Central West? This councillor is dreaming big
September 25, 2022
By Peter Holmes
Orange City councillor Jeff Whitton remembers well the glory days of 1974, when a cobbled-together team of rugby league players from these parts - including Bob Pilon, “TV” Ted Ellery and Terry Fahey - won the midweek Amco Cup competition under the banner of “Western Division”.
Nearly 50 years have washed under the bridge since that heroic feat, and Whitton believes the Central West is in a prime position to one day pitch a side drawn from Group 10 and Group 11 players.
The timeline? Something like this. First, the city will find the more than $10 million required to build a stadium in the new sporting precinct.
Second, Orange will become a feeder city to an NRL club, supplying juniors and hosting NRL fixtures featuring that side.
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Third, Orange will host an NRL final.
And fourth, the Central West will develop a pitch to have a team in the NRL, drawing on players from places including Orange, Bathurst, Lithgow, Oberon, Blayney, Cowra, Parkes, Canowindra, Condoblin, Dubbo, Forbes and Mudgee. The new stadium will be its home base, or games might be shared between the larger Central West cities.
Whitton reckons these four phases could take up to 25 years. But you need to start somewhere, and he says that as a rugby league nursery the Central West has proven itself over many decades.
“When we get our stadium, we need to start talking to NRL clubs,” he says.
He pointed to the relationship between Panthers in Penrith and the Bathurst club of the same name.
“Big clubs have got a lot of money and they need to build pipelines of young players.
“South Sydney Rabbitohs would be my preference.” This, of course, is a supremely daft suggestion that only serves to reveal Whitton’s biases. As any Wests Tigers supporter knows, in 25 years the Leichhardt, Campbelltown, Ashfield, Concord and Parramatta-based club will just be hitting its straps, after decades dwindling in the cellar.
THE Amco Cup, later the Tooth Cup, the KB Cup and the National Panasonic Cup, was a big TV ratings winner in the 1970s and 1980s.
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It was a separate competition to the main premiership, and only ran for part of the season, under lights on a Wednesday night from 1974 to 1989.
Teams that did not play in the NSW Rugby League premiership such as Monaro, Ryde-Eastwood, Southern Division and Western Division, were invited at various times into the midweek cup.
HQ was Leichhardt Oval, home of the Balmain Tigers, and the Channel 10 commentary team featured the likes of Ray Warren, Graeme Hughes, Billy Anderson and Keith “Golden Boots” Barnes.
The game was preceded by a schoolboys fixture in the Commonwealth Bank Cup, with league nurseries such as Holy Cross College Ryde competing, and these games were replayed on television on a weekend morning.
Midweek footy was at times a little different to the weekend game. There were four 20-minute quarters, presumably to allow for more advertising on TV. The ball could be striped. Players daubed black grease paint under their eyes as some type of protection against the glare of the lights.
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In the Amco Cup’s first year the Johnny King-coached Western Division caused a massive boil over.
The venues for the 1974 knockout series were Leichhardt Oval, Belmore Sports Ground, Seiffert Oval in Canberra and Wade Park in Orange.
In its first game Western Division beat the Auckland Falcons 13-7 at Leichhardt Oval (referee Laurie Bruyeres).
In its second it defeated Canterbury-Bankstown Berries 12-10 at Leichhardt Oval (referee Keith Holman).
Its third fixture was held at Wade Park, against the Manly-Warringah Sea Eagles.
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The game was played in front of a crowd of about 5,000. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the population of Orange in 1976 was 25,500.
The match ended in a 12-all draw, with Western Division being named the winner based on a penalty countback - Manly had been penalised 12 times by referee Jack Danzey, and Western Division 11 times.
The final at Leichhardt Oval, on August 21, 1974, was a low scoring affair, with Western Division beating the Penrith Panthers 6-2 (referee Laurie Bruyeres).
In his 2014 book The Night the Music Died, the veteran sportswriter and author Ian Heads wrote: "The men chosen to be involved in the launch of Western Division's campaign were a mixed bag that included among others: a slaughterman; a sleeper cutter; a bush-loving rabbit-trapper who would go on to train greyhounds and horses and also play league for Australia; a farmer; a market-gardener; a copper who had once been Johnny Sattler's roommate at South Sydney; a hooker who had sat on the bench for Souths in the 1971 Grand Final against St George; an accomplished boxer; a machinist; a railway worker; a grain buyer and seller; and a bald-headed animal impersonator, sometime council worker and miner who would become a TV star.”
Two months prior, on June 26, 1974, Western Division had played the Great Britain Lions in front of more than 6,000 people at Wade Park, losing 25-10.
Some have described it as the most violent football game ever played. Heads’ book says three players were sent off and the referee needed a police escort to get not just out of the ground, but out of town.
IT’S one thing to stoke the embers of nostalgia, but the harsh reality is that Orange is still a long way off having enough money to build the stadium that would lead to Whitton’s timeline becoming a potential reality.
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At last count it was more than $10 million short. We won’t know how short until later this year, or early in 2023. And even then, nobody knows where construction prices are heading in the next five years.
If the federal Labor government rejects Orange City Council’s application for $10 million extra funding for the sporting stadium - as seems entirely feasible given its comments thus far on the scheme that was doling out the dough - and a state Labor government is elected in March 2023, there is a real chance that Orange may struggle to secure the extra funding required to build the complex.
A Labor stranglehold at state and federal level is an even chance, given polling shows a close result at state level that could see a hung parliament. [In which case, if Shooters, Fishers & Farmers party MP Phil Donato is re-elected, he could be among those holding the balance of power.]
When council realised the $25 million promised by then premier Gladys Berejiklian three years ago wasn’t going to be enough to build a sporting precinct with fields, an athletics track and a stadium with grandstand, it applied for another $10 million - the maximum allowed - under the former Morrison government’s Building Better Regions Fund (BBRF).
But when the federal Coalition was turfed out in May, the new Albanese Labor government passed the BBRF, which was into its sixth round of funding, to the independent Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) for review. Labor smelled a rat.
Applicants to round six of the BBRF were due to learn if they had been successful around July, however that timeline is now out the window.
The audit office’s review of the BBRF was not kind to the Morrison government, stating that in two thirds of the cases money was thrown at projects in mostly National Party-held seats that had not been considered the most meritorious by public servants whose job it was to weigh the pros and cons of each application without fear or favour.
The new federal Labor government’s local government minister, Catherine King, may close the fund altogether. She may keep it and move the goalposts, or conjure an entirely new scheme.
A spokesperson for King told The Orange News Examiner this week that the minister will reveal the future of the BBRF in the October 25 Budget. Until then, the stadium project remains in limbo.
King is playing her cards close to her chest at this point.
On July 29, in response to a question from a journalist about whether the BBRF was involved in “pork barrelling”, King said: “Certainly I think that in terms of what we've seen, in waste and rorts, we've got a big job to do. I think this is certainly one of those funds, you would have to say, if the target is that you want to help, lift up regional Australia, lift up every region, that this fund did not do that.
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“It lifted up some regions at the expense of others … The National Party have had their hands in the cookie jar when it comes to regional funding. And it's something that's a waste and rorts in terms of regional funding; fairness in regional funding is something we want to see. But we want to see the end of waste and rorts.”
Asked about round six of the BBRF funding, for which Orange City Council had applied for $10 million, she said: “I haven't made any decisions about the Building Better Regions Fund round six. But it is fair to say, when you get a damning audit office report into this fund, that it is pretty hard to see that the fund is not corrupted in some way.”
She also said no projects had been approved “under round six … that round was not concluded prior to the [Coalition government’s] caretaker period”.
“I am looking … line by line to look at the waste and rorts that have happened under the previous government and, frankly, they are now looking to be in the millions and billions of dollars across all portfolios.”
And in what may prove to be an ominous statement, she said: “There is a reason that [the Nationals] funded more projects in their seats. You know, there are regions like mine here in Ballarat, that frankly, have missed out on the Building Better Regions Fund.
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“And if we did get grants, it was at those really smaller community events grants, when you see some of the grants: millions of dollars into sporting facilities, boat infrastructure, you name it, and we're starting to see some of that now … they made sure their seats did well out of this fund and I'll let people draw their own conclusions from that.”
The extra $10 million is not the end of Orange City Council’s woes.
It recently conceded that even if it received the $10 million under the BBRF, it would still not be enough to build the stadium.
"Costs have continued to rise since the last estimate was received, and particularly in regional economies,” said a council staff report to councillors.
“A new QS estimate [working out the amount of materials needed for building work, and how much they will cost] will be completed to understand the impact of the ongoing cost escalation”.
Other sources of funding are being pursued.
"Orange City Council is working with the Department of Regional NSW to monitor and manage the costs of the project, identify any savings and identify any additional funding sources," the council staff statement said.
New preliminary cost estimates based on detailed designs were expected to be finalised in December 2022 to support any additional applications for funding, staff said.
If the federal government does not give council the $10 million, the project could find itself $15 million or more short.
In this case Orange City Council would be left with two options - secure that funding from the state government, or take all the money from its own council cash reserves. The latter is unlikely, which would leave the state government of the day holding all the keys.
Given the messy genesis of the sporting stadium, and the fact the NSW government has already tipped in $25 million, how likely is it that the Liberal-Nationals would promise another $15 million or more to finish the job?
The other scenario is that Labor wins the state election in March and decides that $25 million of state money is enough. Then what?
Whitton is a veteran councillor who is well-connected in Labor circles. He prefers to look at the glass as being half full, and says he is confident Orange will get the money from state and/or federal governments.
And if it finds itself, say, $5 million short? Would the council dig into its reserves? Whitton says it would be mad not to, as long as it didn’t impact on the delivery of services within current budgets.
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