I was very fortunate this evening to attend a seminar run by the Glen Eira City Council relating to Sports Grounds, Water Restrictions & the effects on Sporting Clubs.
Many of you are active at various levels of sport. Alot of the information related to higher levels of sport too, including both TAC, VAFA. It did have relevance to AFL footy as well.
The significant speakers were:
Paul Gilchrist - South Eastern Water
Peter Todd - Co-ordinator Ground Maintenance, City of Glen Eira, and
Cain Liddle - Promotional Speaker, YMCA
Some of you may also recognise Cain Liddle as an assistant with the Calder Cannons. He had some enlightening info on upper levels of footy.
Paul Gilchrist basically repeated many of the warnings that I posted on the Drought thread in the General Section back in August last year. Melbourne is now below 40% in water reserves. Stage 4 restrictions kick in when reserves hit 29.3%. SEWater expect that to happen in late April. There is no more rain expected in February. There is expected to be big rain storms in March, but there is no infrastructure to capture that rain into reserves.
If you, individually, have the opportunity to prepare yourselves to capture that rain, via water tanks etc, I suggest you do so. The State authorities are still relying on the August/September thaws. By then, we may not have a reserve.
Peter Todd was next. The most enlightening fact he gave was that a sports ground uses about 1 million litres of water per year in irrigation. Water tanks hold 2% of that, so they are not being looked at as an irrigation alternative. Councils are hopefully looking at April to commence the recovery of damaged grounds. They are also looking to reduce the winter season with a May start. As many of you know, there have been many restrictions on pre-seasons & practice matches. Stage 4, expected in April, may see tougher restrictions.
Cain Liddle was very enlightening. Speaking for YMCA sporting services - in Glen Eira, management of Caulfield Rec, Carnegie & East Bentleigh Swimming Pools - he said that many upper level sporting organisations, VFL, TAC & VAFA, were organising non-ground preparations for their players through YMCA. More importantly, he did reveal that currently on-ground training was causing a record number of player injuries. Apparently, there are record levels of Osteo Pubitis occurring amongst the higher grades of football, mainly due to overtraining on grounds too hard for safe practice. There are also record levels of other non-contact injuries as a result of poor training practice.
As an aside, the Bayside, Kingston & Port Phillip councils have petitioned to ban sport in March. Imagine, no cricket finals.
Some of you may ask what this has to do with the Tigers in the AFL. Well, I just thought that if we can understand the big picture now, it may help us to understand the ramifications of the drought when it may effect AFL footy in the future.
PS: It is expected that Melbourne's population will grow by 56% by 2050. I ponder how long it will take for the State authorities to move to prepare Melbourne's various water, transport, power & other infrastructures to meet that growth.
Many of you are active at various levels of sport. Alot of the information related to higher levels of sport too, including both TAC, VAFA. It did have relevance to AFL footy as well.
The significant speakers were:
Paul Gilchrist - South Eastern Water
Peter Todd - Co-ordinator Ground Maintenance, City of Glen Eira, and
Cain Liddle - Promotional Speaker, YMCA
Some of you may also recognise Cain Liddle as an assistant with the Calder Cannons. He had some enlightening info on upper levels of footy.
Paul Gilchrist basically repeated many of the warnings that I posted on the Drought thread in the General Section back in August last year. Melbourne is now below 40% in water reserves. Stage 4 restrictions kick in when reserves hit 29.3%. SEWater expect that to happen in late April. There is no more rain expected in February. There is expected to be big rain storms in March, but there is no infrastructure to capture that rain into reserves.
If you, individually, have the opportunity to prepare yourselves to capture that rain, via water tanks etc, I suggest you do so. The State authorities are still relying on the August/September thaws. By then, we may not have a reserve.
Peter Todd was next. The most enlightening fact he gave was that a sports ground uses about 1 million litres of water per year in irrigation. Water tanks hold 2% of that, so they are not being looked at as an irrigation alternative. Councils are hopefully looking at April to commence the recovery of damaged grounds. They are also looking to reduce the winter season with a May start. As many of you know, there have been many restrictions on pre-seasons & practice matches. Stage 4, expected in April, may see tougher restrictions.
Cain Liddle was very enlightening. Speaking for YMCA sporting services - in Glen Eira, management of Caulfield Rec, Carnegie & East Bentleigh Swimming Pools - he said that many upper level sporting organisations, VFL, TAC & VAFA, were organising non-ground preparations for their players through YMCA. More importantly, he did reveal that currently on-ground training was causing a record number of player injuries. Apparently, there are record levels of Osteo Pubitis occurring amongst the higher grades of football, mainly due to overtraining on grounds too hard for safe practice. There are also record levels of other non-contact injuries as a result of poor training practice.
As an aside, the Bayside, Kingston & Port Phillip councils have petitioned to ban sport in March. Imagine, no cricket finals.
Some of you may ask what this has to do with the Tigers in the AFL. Well, I just thought that if we can understand the big picture now, it may help us to understand the ramifications of the drought when it may effect AFL footy in the future.
PS: It is expected that Melbourne's population will grow by 56% by 2050. I ponder how long it will take for the State authorities to move to prepare Melbourne's various water, transport, power & other infrastructures to meet that growth.
