Park Ridge Pirates AFL club have expressed their anger and disappointment with federal member for Forde Bert van Manen committing $350,000 for Logan Lightning Soccer Club to upgrade their clubhouse, while their plan to build a facility received nothing.
The Pirates have been trying to secure a new home base for nine years, and this year came up with the idea to build a clubhouse at their existing home ground at Park Ridge High School, after learning that land earmarked by council for a new home would not be a reality for 3-5 years.
To accommodate the club’s 600 members and 200 players, they needed to raise approximately $1.5 million and were able to secure funding commitments from the state government of $500,000, $200,000 from Logan City Council and had been negotiating a commitment from Education Queensland who said they would be able to aid with funding but over a number of years due to budget restrictions.
The club was hopeful a federal commitment would help bring Education Queensland to the table sooner but were told they were too late in making their application via Mr van Manen.
“I have already spoken with Andy to assure him I am committed to securing the organisation funding for a new clubhouse in my next term of government,” Mr van Manen said.
“I did provide a letter of support and unfortunately when I received their letter, it was after submissions for local projects had closed, which is why I committed to this project in my next term of government under the next round of funding.
“I am extremely supportive of the Park Ridge Pirates and regularly attend their home games.”
Pirates president Andy Colenso disagreed with Mr van Manen’s claim that they submitted their application after the closing date of May 6.
“We had all the drawings and costings done and the only hole in our application was the funding problem,” he said.
Colenso’s frustration lies is in the fact that Mr van Manen called him to state that the Pirates were not on a list of pre-election commitments he would be honouring and that he was only aware of the club’s desire for a clubhouse in the last two months, but Mr Colenso told Jimboomba Times the Coalition MP has been aware of the club’s needs for years.
“I’ve got nothing against that club (Logan Lightning) but if they’ve got a clubhouse and they’re participating, do they really need to do improvements to that, they’re upgrading on something I haven’t even got, how do I ever catch up to these clubs,” Mr Colenso said.
“It could be a lot more fairer system, it just appears that we’re the latecomers and we’re disadvantaged, compared to other clubs who are already set-up and have got good facilities.”
Mr Colenso said he felt that with commitments already promised from council, state government and the AFL, federal funding was what was required to push forward funding from Education Queensland.
“Laurie Smith at council has been the only one batting outside the square he has gone and got actual legislation changed so he can support us and give us some money,” he said.
“Linus Power has shown that he is supporting us by taking us into the parliament and going to meet with Kate Jones and for me Bert’s been a little bit disappointing.
Mr Colenso said at the end of the day the lack of a clubhouse was hindering the club’s future.
“We're losing players, because of it, we're losing all our quality kids because they're going to clubs with good facilities, they're going outside the Logan district which is just deplorable,” he said.
Mr van Manen has also announced $100,000 in funding this week for lighting for AFL club Ormeau Bulldogs.