Melbourne Demons forward Russell Robertson joined his team-mates at Casey Fields last Thursday morning for the AFL club’s first training session at the venue. 24333 Picture: Luke Plummer.By Marc McGowan
MELBOURNE Football Club’s players finally set foot on Casey Fields last Thursday morning amid news a 30-year deal linking the club to the City of Casey is imminent.
MFC general manager of football operations Chris Connolly confirmed yesterday (Wednesday) that an official announcement was only weeks away.
The City of Casey will allocate about $2.24 million towards a major extension of the pavilion at Casey Fields once it reaches a deal with MFC.
MFC trained for the first time at the Cranbourne East venue last week and will continue to do so every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
Connolly described the Casey Fields facilities as world-class.
“This is as good as any venue in Australia,” he said.
“I’ve been all over the world and Casey Fields offers as good training facilities as anywhere – and that includes Great Britain, Europe and America.”
Connolly played a pivotal role in Peter German becoming the Casey Scorpions’ new senior coach, and is looking forward to developing a strong alliance with the VFL club.
“Peter’s got as good a coaching record as anyone in Australia and he was a champion player (for North Melbourne),” Connolly said.
“The Casey Scorpions appoint their own coach, but I felt Peter went to Burnie and built a very powerful club, and Subiaco was a perennial loser in the WAFL, and a fractured club, and he reshaped them into a powerhouse.”
Connolly said German would be a “cornerstone” of the Scorpions’ and the MFC’s efforts to establish a community presence.
“One of the challenges here for the Casey Scorpions, due to a lack of resources or funding, is that they haven’t been able to build as strong a relationship with the community as they would have liked,” he said.
“Part of Peter’s responsibility is to really get out into the community and build a strong relationship for the Casey Scorpions and Melbourne in the community.”
Connolly conceded that his club’s officials had to take responsibility for the delay in formalising an agreement with the City of Casey.
“It’s been a big year and I’ve been at the forefront,” he said.
“We’ve had a changing of the board and have also had four chief executives over the season.
“The club is going through a reshaping phase and we’ve had difficulties there.”
Connolly also welcomed the debate surrounding MFC’s move into the City of Casey, but hopes the critics can be won over.
“I think, to keep it in pers-pective, there is a lot of healthy debate in the council out there, which is a strength of the council,” he said.
“There are misconceptions from Melbourne supporters about our relationship with the City of Casey and misconceptions from people in the City of Casey about what we’re doing here.
“In the end it will be our performance that will build our relationship.
“We can talk it up all we want, but, at the end of the day, we need to deliver – and we will deliver – and the relationship between everyone involved will go from strength to strength.”
