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North Adelaide Football Club and Prospect District Cricket Club are looking for backing for a $17.5 million plan to turn the Prospect Oval into the “heart of sport for the local community”.

The clubs want to build a new indoor sports centre, function centre and change rooms on the northern side of the oval along with better lighting to host twilight matches.

The draft plan - called Heart of Sport for the Local Community -was created by consultants Mott MacDonald, who also managed the Adelaide Oval development, also envisages slightly shrinking the playing field to make it the same size as Adelaide Oval and add 50 carparks.

Football Club Chief Executive Greg Edwards and Cricket Club President Tom Hastwell spoke about their ideas at a Prospect Council workshop last month.

Prospect Council owns Prospect Oval and leases it to the cricket and football clubs, as well as the Prospect RSL. The Council came up with its own $12 million masterplan for the oval and surrounding areas in 2009, eventually spending $4 million converting one of the ground’s grandstands into a new gym and function centre in 2011. This also involved transforming the downstairs players’ facilities, to include new meeting rooms, amenities, plunge pool and medical areas.

The clubs would manage the latest redevelopment, and would benefit from revenue from the function centre and indoor sports centre.

In another boost for venues in metropolitan Adelaide, the Goodwood Oval is to receive $$2.5 million in South Australian Government funding to revamp ageing sporting facilities at Goodwood Oval at Millswood.

The grant will allow for new infrastructure, including the grandstand, clubrooms, female change facilities, public toilets and other improvements.

The upgrades will help the Goodwood Saints Football Club and Goodwood Cricket Club continue to grow, boosting female and junior participation rates.

South Australia's Office for Recreation and Sport will now work with Unley Council, local residents and the sporting clubs to develop a plan to transform the current building footprint into a modern and fit for purpose community facility.

The current club, change room and public amenities at Goodwood Oval were developed in the 1960s and since then have had limited capital improvement.

This new investment is in addition to the South Australian Government’s $96 million funding injection into sport clubs, stadiums and ovals across the state, including female friendly change facilities, artificial pitches and playing surfaces.

Images: 2017 season SANFL action at Prospect Oval (top), the ground's 2011 function centre (middle, courtesy of Sarah Constructions) and Goodwood Oval's current grandstand (below). 

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