THERE isn’t a single blade of grass out of line at Scully Park, which has been prepped to perfection for Saturday night’s NRL match, with the Wests Tigers taking on the Newcastle Knights.
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They walked around the field and went up to the heads groundsman and told him ‘this ground is a credit to you, and it’s better than any ground in Sydney today’.
- West Leagues Club CEO Rod Laing
Wests Entertainment Group CEO Rod Laing said the NRL sent up a team paint the logo onto the ground.
“They walked around the field and went up to the head groundsman and told him ‘this ground is a credit to you, and it’s better than any ground in Sydney today’,” Mr Laing said.
“I can’t believe how good it is. We’ve very happy with it, he’s done a magic job, particularly given that Tamworth has gone through a long dry spell.
“He seems to be a magician. He’s pulled out best pitch for players to play on. The good news is there was 10mm of rain last night and no rain predicted for tomorrow, so it’s going to be perfect.”
Mr Laing said the event had been meticulously planned – even to the point of having a back-up generator in the unlikely event of a blackout cause by a car hitting a power pole.
“We’ve been working on this for months now,” he said.
“I can’t recall a single event drawing 10,000 people to one space – the TRECC gets about 5000 – so our main priority is patron safety.
“We’re planning for anything that may go wrong, but hopefully it won’t.”
Along with being the first NRL match to be held in Tamworth, the game is also the first time Scully Park has reached capacity.
“We built that ground for that number, so we’re giving it a test,” Mr Lang said.
“The City versus Country game in 2016 had 8600, but we’ve put a lot more planning into this event.
“We used drone footage from the game to study where there were empty spaces, and we think we’ve filled them with stands, stalls and different concepts for fans.
“There are additional toilets in various areas, more food areas, more beverage stations.”
For anyone that can’t make it to the game, it will be broadcast live on big screens at Wests and Diggers.
“One group of Tigers fans booked their accommodation months ago, but missed out on tickets, so that’s where they’ll be,” Mr Lang said.