Dalton Drainage Under Spotlight

Illawarra Mercury

Tuesday December 11, 2007

By CHRIS ROOTS

WOLLONGONG City Council will further investigate ways of improving the drainage at North Dalton Park after Sunday's NSW-South Australia Ford Ranger Cup was washed out.

Despite a fine day, the outfield was waterlogged and unplayable after copping more than 275mm of rain in the eight days leading into one of Illawarra cricket's biggest events in the past decade.

"When we refurbished the ground we looked at the drainage system but it would have cost $80,000 to $90,000 to redo it," the council's sports field co-ordinator Jeff Wearing said.

"We had advice from our partners that we could achieve the same thing by re-profiling the ground, so the surface drainage would be very good. It worked very well but we just had an abnormal amount of rain in a very short period and water couldn't get away."

Wearing said the flooding of North Dalton Park was not a normal problem in Wollongong with most sporting grounds generally struggling to retain water.

He said the game would have been able to go ahead yesterday after another good drying day.

"The ground was underwater on Thursday and we managed to get rid of that water but the rain on Friday night was really the death knell for the game," he said.

"We are already looking at ways we could improve things, so that doesn't happen again because it's events like that game which North Dalton Park was built for."

Many in the crowd of nearly 2000 were disappointed, as was Cricket NSW chief executive Dave Gilbert.

"There's some food for thought maybe in terms of what the ground needs to do to make sure this doesn't happen again," he said.

"There's obviously a drainage issue. I've already had a preliminary chat to the locals here and they're absolutely hell-bent on trying to get that sorted."

SPORT RETORT

Should the game have been called off earlier?illawarramercury.com.au

© 2007 Illawarra Mercury

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