Stars rally for more funding and facilities for community

Some of the state’s highest profile sporting heroes have joined forces to back an urgent push for more funding and facilities for community and grassroots sports including football in NSW.

Macarthur FC’s rising young star defender Isaac Hovar along with dual Olympic medallist, flag-bearer and World Champion basketballer Lauren Jackson, former Australian cricketer and now CEO of Softball NSW Stuart Clark, former Australian cricketer Alex Blackwell, Winter Olympic ice-skater and Beijing flag-bearer Brendan Kerry, co-captain of the NSW Swifts Maddy Proud, former Olympic beach volleyball gold medallist Kerri Pottharst and former wheelchair tennis player Stephan Rochecouste called on the NSW Government and Opposition to step up the funding and provision of facilities for community sport ahead of the 2023 state election.

The “Playing Catch Up” report by Sport NSW, the peak advocacy body representing the state’s sporting sector, calls on all sides of politics to properly fund NSW sporting organisations, which have not received an increase to their organisational support payments – known as ‘core funding’ – since the year 2000.

“In our growing region of southwest Sydney, we are seeing the facilities crunch first-hand,” said Hovar.

“There just isn’t enough fields for our young kids and participant to get on. We want our sport and our region to keep growing well, but we have to make sure our sporting facilities keep up.”

Facilities are recognised as a key factor in keeping and attracting participants by providing spaces that not only enable play, but also inspire people to play football.

In 2022 the game saw the impact of poor-quality football pitches with many fields being washed out and unplayable due to the wet weather conditions experienced. Almost half (48%) of all football fields in NSW do not have drainage. Improving the existing venue capacity of current venues is a key pillar of the NSW Football Infrastructure Strategy 2020-2030.

Additional fields are certainly required to ensure that football can continue to grow in the future, but improving the existing venue capacity, through such infrastructure as irrigation, drainage, lighting will allow more participants to play the world game into the future.

Sport NSW Chair Chris Hall said the report reveals NSW is a laggard compared to other states, when it comes to supporting community sport.

“We are calling on all sides of politics to play catch up in funding community sport in NSW,” Mr Hall said.

“In some cases, the payments made to a sport in NSW is close to 8 times less than the similar payment made to their Queensland equivalent.

“While there have been some great programs over recent years, core funding for community sport is way behind other states.

“This means that the least funded sports, some of which are Olympic sports, are receiving just $5,000 a year to administer their organisations, run their competitions and comply with important but increasingly onerous governance requirements including matters of integrity, child protection and data compliance.

“Community sport is not for profit. You simply can’t expect sports to have an ever increasing burden of responsibility and be the glue that keeps our community together, while providing them funding that has stayed the same for 22 years,” he said.

The report also reveals NSW community sports are facing a facilities crisis, with some sports turning away potential participants or curbing their growth because of a lack of places to play.

“Our population in NSW continues to grow, people are returning to sport post the pandemic, and sports need facilities to match demand,” Mr Hall said.

“Playing Catch Up highlights the situation in basketball in where 10,000 children are turned away from playing every year because they simply don’t have enough courts.

“Football is crying out for more fields, while water sports are in desperate need of more facilities and non-swimming water sports are fighting for useable waterways and facilities.

“Sport and recreation is crucial to our wellbeing, our mental health and the strength of our community, and we want to make sure the sector can deliver for participants throughout NSW,” he said.

The Playing Catch Up report was compiled after 6 months of consultation with Sport NSW members which include 80 State Sporting Organisations.

It calls for an $8 million uplift in ‘core funding’ for sports, and also recommends continuing and expanding the successful Active Kids vouchers by making them available for adults and pre-schoolers too.

“We want to acknowledge the success of the Active Kids voucher program as well the significant investment in infrastructure made by the NSW Government in recent years, but the reality is even though those investments are welcome, there is still more to do to support healthy, active and growing communities across NSW,” Mr Hall said.

“We believe an $8 million increase in funds for community sport could be found from the underspend in Active Kids which is about one dollar per person in NSW. In return we will get a more vibrant sport sector able to foster healthy communities,” he said.

The Playing Catch Up Sport NSW report also calls for the transparent reporting of government data that would reveal where sports facilities are most needed, as well as the establishment of a new Sports Infrastructure unit to spearhead the facilities push.