A hardy group of Rugby League officials led by Wagga Rugby League President Warren Barclay came armed with hand drills and screwdrivers to souvenir seats from Penrith’s BlueBet Stadium as the famous local ground undergoes a $309 million redevelopment.
Barclay and his band of six colleagues, including NSWRL’s Western and Southern Zone Manager Dave Skinner and RISE Academy Manager Adam Perry, want to give the plastic seats a ‘new life’ at Rugby League grounds in NSW’s largest inland city.
“For a bunch of 60-somethings we did it alright,” Barclay told nswrl.com.au
“I’d like to thank the people at the Penrith Panthers club. They were excellent to deal with and really helped us.”
Riverina Crane Services provided a semi-trailer to transport around 2,000 seats back to Wagga.
“We primarily wanted to save them from landfill, there’s history to them, and we’re getting quite a seat collection down here. So it’s just a continuation of that,” Barclay said.
Penrith seats add to those taken from Parramatta Stadium before it was demolished in February 2017 to create the new 30,000-seat CommBank Stadium, and Allianz Stadium at Moore Park in early 2019 before another knock-down-rebuild to a new 45,500 capacity venue.
“We hope to spread the seats around our three grounds – McDonalds Park, Harris Park and Parramore Park.
“We’re not sure exactly how they’ll be distributed – we’ve just got to find some money now to do the concreting,” he said, adding Wagga Rugby League would start applying for various government grants to set up the necessary infrastructure.
“There will be no need for plaques to tell fans where their seats came from,” Barclay said.
“Most people know where we’ve acquired them. We’ve now got blue, green, orange, red and black seats when you put the three stadiums together.
“Over the years this area has always been strong Rugby League territory - predominantly the (Canterbury-Bankstown) Bulldogs, (Canberra) Raiders, Dragons, Illawarra, Parramatta.“
As far as Penrith connections go, Wagga like to think of current Clive Churchill Medallist Liam Martin as a ‘near local’ since he’s from Temora, less than an hour’s drive away. Then there’s former Panthers (1995-97) front-rower David Alexander from the Super League era.
Currently Wagga has three Rugby League clubs from Group 9 – Kangaroos, Brothers and South City Bulls – who mostly play at either McDonalds Park or Harris Park.
McDonalds Park, which has hosted City-Country and NRL games, has a capacity of around 10,000 with 1,500 seats. Barclay wants eventually to increase that figure to 3,500 seated positions for spectators.
