Knox Regional Football Centre has become a home away from home for Boroondara Eagles FC, after the club struck a deal with the regional sporting centre to host its home games this season.
With over 800 registered players at the club, Eagles officials sought to ease the strain on permanent home ground Macleay Park, which struggled to accommodate players and fixtures in previous campaigns.
Boroondara Technical Director Manny Koutroulis praised the Knox move, saying it had allowed the club to be more fluid with its scheduling and preserved the quality of its home pitch.
“We’re an 800 registered player club [with] training sessions at Macleay Park every night of the week,” Koutroulis said.
“Our Miniroos program on Saturday is massive, our junior program on Sunday is massive, so to take away some pressure from Macleay Park we decided that we’d come play here at Knox.
“When you are an 800 player registered club with so much traffic on your grounds, a lot of games can get abandoned due to poor pitch.
“[Knox Park] takes away duress from Macleay Park, and when you come here, no game will get abandoned, whereas a couple of years ago we had about four games abandoned.”
While synthetic grass can often be a catalyst for debate among footballing communities, Koutroulis praised the surface, saying the club consulted with players and regularly received positive post-game feedback.
“It is a quality surface, in my view it is the best synthetic surface in Victoria by a mile, it’s very spongy underneath,” he said
“I know many players complain about synthetic surfaces being too hard, this surface is certainly very good, I get reports back from players, men and women, and they are telling me that they’re pulling up very well after playing on this surface.
“We know there’s a few of them out there that are not that great, but this is a quality surface.
“We trialled it, we played a couple of games, we asked our players, and they said, ‘this is a winner, we’d love to play out here,’ so it’s been a big win.
“I must say, I hope the facility at Knox would be utilised more at NPL level. I don’t think this is utilised enough, it’s a great facility.”
The former head coach turned Technical Director, who has a deep relationship with the Eagles after leading the women’s team through consecutive promotions, believes the move had not erased home advantage, with his players becoming accustomed to their new surroundings during pre-season.
He added that the move to Knox granted additional benefits to players, with floodlights allowing for friendlier game times, including night matches, which was more inviting for new recruits.
“During the pre-season we had a policy that we’d play three or four practice matches here, and we also came out and trained on four occasions, so come the first home game of the season, we felt comfortable here because we’d been here on seven or eight occasions during our pre-season,” he said.
“So really we haven’t felt like we’ve lost any advantage, in fact our teams have had a great home record here at Knox.
“It’s a facility we use for women and men, and the night games have been really good, where our students have a whole Sunday to study, to play Sunday night, and the men, when they play here on a Friday night, have a whole weekend in front of them, and I think that’s helped us to recruit players of both genders to be honest.”
While the use of external facilities comes at a price, Koutroulis said the club had planned appropriately to financially secure the services of the regional football centre, and the benefits had far outweighed the costs of hiring the facilities, with future use of Knox very much in the club’s vision.
“There is a cost involved, I wouldn’t say it’s an exorbitant cost, we have 800 registered players, we are in a good position financially, and we budget, we are very stringent with our budget, and we have budget allowances for the hiring of this facility,” he said.
“If there was a synthetic field, theoretically, or an additional field built in the Boroondara council, we would certainly be very happy for that to happen. But if that wasn’t to happen, we certainly will be playing senior matches at home in Balwyn, but will continue to combine games with the facility here.
“Going forward, we’d more than happy to utilise this facility next year and going forward if need be.”
Photo: Graeme Furlong