SIGNIFICANT upgrades to Narrandera Sportsground has ensured the facility is 'ready made' to host big ticket events, including potential AFL and AFLW pre-season fixtures.
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The Narrandera Eagles and Narrandera Shire Council have spent many months upgrading amenities to complement a playing surface widely regarded as the best in the region.
A brand new club room and function area have been built alongside other amenities, while the home and away changerooms are AFL standard.
AFL NSW-ACT's community football manager, for regional NSW and ACT, Marc Geppert, said he was hugely impressed when officials were invited to tour the venue last month.
"It blew me away, especially the playing facilities in terms of the amenities for players. The home and away sheds are second to none, they're AFL-standard change rooms," he said.
"The function area and club room upstairs is a good thing for the footy club, but it's a facility that's going to be massive for the community.
"Narrandera Sportsground has always been a great venue to watch footy at. Some of their facilities had started to date in terms of changerooms and so forth, but now this completely separates it."
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The ground last hosted an AFL pre-season clash in 2017, when Greater Western Sydney defeated West Coast.
Albury is likely to be first cab off the rank should AFL or AFLW pre-season content be allocated to the Riverina next year, after travel restrictions due to COVID forced this year's scheduled clash at Lavington to be scrapped.
"We've been lucky in the past with having games here (Wagga), Lavington (Albury) or Narrandera and it's always worked virtually on a rotational basis," Geppert said.
"Albury was due to get a game this year before COVID struck, so if we can secure another game for our region Lavington probably needs to get it. But now Narrandera has upgraded their facilities it's a really good facility.
"It's been difficult to get games to regional areas with the impact COVID's had on travel, but Narrandera is now a ready-made ground for that type of opportunity.
"The ground is second to none and we want to be able to utilise that as much as possible.
"Hopefully if we can get back to a sense of normality we might be able to attract pre-season AFL and AFLW games back to Narrandera Sportsground, because at the moment it's our best facility.
"There's talks of Robertson Oval being redeveloped as part of the (Bolton Park) masterplan which is super exciting as well."
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