I don't believe that NPL(and associated comps) should be prioritised over community football on grounds that are shared by both clubs. At the end of the day, the fields are community fields, there's more community players than there are NPL etc. And community players fork out a lot of money to play too. If you want to talk about the different trigger levels for games being called off on grounds that are solely NPL that's different, but where co-location occurs, it should be up to the ground committee and the same standards should be applied to both. None of this "we'll cancel community football on Saturday so that NPL can play Sunday"

With regard to artificial turf, councils shouldn't be providing turfed facilities. Councils don't even provide NPL level facilities; council provides community level facilities. The upfront capital cost along with the ongoing maintenance costs for artificial is cost prohibitive and won't pass a business case when there's fields out there little better than cow paddocks. Any artificial courts would have to be part of a regional level facility and kept under lock and key, as opposed to all other fields out there which are (when not in paid use) fully available to the general public (e.g. everyone is entitled to go down to Lyle Peacock, Jack McLaughlin, Lakes field, etc. At any time and go and kick a ball around on it) because they would be too at risk of damage and vandalism and the ability to repair the courts would be significantly less and substantially more expensive than grass fields. So I think the only way it would work would be to have the associations save up and create the facilities. Unfortunately though a lot of that cost would go down to community football who would never get on to it.

In my opinion the best option would be to work on getting as many fields as possible sand slit and irrigated. It's around $100-$150k per field to do but it would substantially decrease washouts. It wouldn't stop all washouts, Allen Davis, Charlestown, etc. Are all sandslit and yet are totally saturated at the moment, but it would significantly reduce the risks of washouts and help the fields hold up better. I also think if you asked most players, at least at the community level, whether they'd prefer to have $2m spent fixing up their amenities building that they barely step foot in, or $150k spent on minimising washouts, I think I know what the answer would be.