West Coast Eagles' AFLW season opener moved to new venue due to muddy ground
The opening-day clash at the recently upgraded Leederville Oval has been moved to the Eagles' other home venue at Lathlain Park. The season kicks off earlier on Thursday at Princes Park when Carlton meet Collingwood.
Work to repair the centre square at Leederville began on Monday after it had been badly damaged by a combination of high traffic and persistent rainfall.
Saturday's WAFL game between East Perth and South Fremantle was played at the ground and left both teams caked in mud after splashing their way across the park.
The call was made on Tuesday to move the game after tests determined the turf was unsafe for play.
"The health and safety of our players is absolutely paramount and so we made the call to move the game," AFL operations boss Laura Kane said.
"Even though works were undertaken to fix the turf around the centre square, we wanted to make the decision as early as possible to give fans, our clubs and our broadcasters time to adapt their plans accordingly."
Lathlain Park has about 6,500 people, compared to the 10,000 capable of attending Leederville.
The Eagles' next match at Leederville Oval falls in round 10 against Geelong followed by Carlton in Round 12, with home games at Lathlain — where the team is based — in rounds four, seven and eight.
Much was made of the $5.2 million upgrades to Leederville, completed in April, including a new playing surface, irrigation and broadcast standard lighting.
The upgrade allowed more games to be played at the ground in the WAFL and WAFLW seasons.
It is not the first time safety concerns have prevented a match being played at the ground, with a 2016 WAFL match between Subiaco and Peel called off at the last minute because of the playing surface.
AAP/ABC
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
News.com.au
3 hours ago
- News.com.au
Meg Lanning in the leading run-scorer in The Hundred two years after international retirement
Australian star Annabel Sutherland has soared to be the No.1 T20 bowler in the world, but an Aussie who doesn't play international cricket is dominating the short format in England. Former captain Meg Lanning is the highest run-scorer in The Hundred after another blistering effort. At 33, and having played her last match for her country in 2023 before a premature retirement that shocked the cricket and sporting world, Lanning continues to show herself to be a batting force. Playing for the Oval Invincibles, Lanning's latest effort was part of a powerhouse opening partnership that racked up 54 runs off 25 balls, the best powerplay score in the five-year history of the competition. Lanning smashed six fours in her 19-ball innings of 36 that took her haul in the tournament to 177 runs in just three innings, 20 ahead of big-hitting Aussie Grace Harris, who still plays for Australia. Since her retirement from the international game, Lanning has continued to plunder runs for Victoria as well as dominate the Indian Premier League, where she's the third highest run-scorer in the tournament's history. All those runs have come against international-calibre bowlers, making it clear she would still be a batting force for Australia. Lanning's retirement sparked a regeneration of the Australian team, and superstar all-rounder Sutherland has been a major beneficiary. The 23-year-old has netted centuries at Test and ODI level and continues to star with the ball. Sutherland has also been a beneficiary of a quirk of the International Cricket Council's rankings system, being elevated to the No.1 T20 bowling ranking despite not playing an international T20 since she took a four-wicket haul against New Zealand in March. But her rating of 736 remains unchanged, as a group of bowlers near the top of the rankings lost points across the last week.
News.com.au
3 hours ago
- News.com.au
Reason why AFL WAG Paris Tier lost her sales job
The girlfriend of a professional athlete has revealed how she lost her job due to her rising profile on social media. Paris Tier, who is dating Greater Western Sydney Giants player Conor Stone, divulged on her WAG — Women and Goals podcast that her social media profile led to her being fired from her job. Ms Tier was working in sales merchandising, and part of her role led to her being contracted out at another businesses. At the time, she didn't have a lot of followers but her posts about what her life was like dating a professional athlete started to boost her profile. 'I started posting on TikTok a month into working this job, and I only had 2000 followers but my videos were averaging 30,000 views,' she told Ms Tier said she wasn't posting about her job, but about her relationship with Stone. She said it started off with mean comments, but things escalated when she posted a clip about an NRL player. After backlash, she deleted the video. 'I got a call from a colleague and she said, '[Our boss] has called me saying you can't work tomorrow because somebody has complained about your TikTok',' Ms Tier said. The AFL WAG was told the complaint was made not to her direct company, but the one that she was contracted to as part of her role. She asked the company's media and human resources if there were any issues with her social media, but neither department had any issues with the content. At the time, Ms Tier had annual leave planned due to a medical procedure so she went on two weeks worth of leave. 'I took the two weeks off because I needed this to calm down before I go back to work, because obviously not everyone loves social media, and if your boss read something that you did online they have to believe it in a way,' she said. 'I was a little bit disappointed because when I messaged [my boss] about it, she said it was nothing. She essentially lied to me.' During her time off, Ms Tier consulted an employment lawyer, received a probation update about why she 'wasn't the right fit for the role' and ultimately decided to leave the job. To this day, she has no idea where the complaint originated from or if it was even real. 'When this happened at work, I was in the state of mind of, 'Have I lost every opportunity to get a good job? Have I lost every opportunity to do a thing I love',' she recalled. 'And no, I haven't.' Ms Tier revealed she works in a completely new industry now, and really loves it, finding the workplace incredibly supportive. She said that contracts needed to highlight what issues they may have in regards to employee's social media presence, particularly as she never talked about the company online — barring the fact that it was on her LinkedIn profile. She said she hasn't added her latest workplace to her profile as she is scared it could happen again. Ms Tier added that there is a belief that many people in her position are unemployed. 'I don't think people realise, they see someone and think, 'Oh my god she's a stay-at-home mum, bet she doesn't have half a brain cell',' she said. 'That woman is 90 per cent of the time on maternity leave, or young enough to still be figuring out their life.' She said baseless assumptions about WAGs are 'not fair' and simply incorrect. 'People have assumptions because we don't post our work, but how can people post their work when individuals do something like this,' she said. 'It's not fair.'
7NEWS
3 hours ago
- 7NEWS
Unfiltered: Erin Phillips opens up on 2016 Olympics heartbreak
Dual sports legend Erin Phillips has opened up on her Olympics heartbreak in a powerful interview with Hamish McLachlan on Unfiltered. Phillips, who was a superstar basketballer before joining the AFLW, felt like she let the entire country down at the Rio Olympics in 2016. Unfiltered, featuring Erin Phillips 9.30pm Wednesday straight after The Front Bar on Seven and 7plus. After starting her basketball career for the Adelaide Lightning in the WNBL, Phillips was drafted to the Connecticut Sun in the WNBA in 2005. She enjoyed a decorated career in America, winning two championships with the Indiana Fever (2012) and Phoenix Mercury (2014) and playing for five teams across nine years. Phillips also solidified her spot in the national team and was a member of the Opals team that won silver at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. After being controversially overlooked for the 2012 Games in London, Phillips was back in favour four years later and was co-captain of the team in Rio. But after sweeping their round robin group, the Opals suffered a shock loss to Serbia in the quarter-finals that ended their streak of five consecutive Olympics with a medal. 'Any time someone mentions Rio (it still affects me),' she says. 'I couldn't talk about Rio for a year because you're playing in the Olympics, you have a whole country behind you, you're playing for the Opals who are so successful, you're one of the leaders of the team. 'And yes every team can have a bad day, you don't always get your fairytale but consequences of losing that was just for me was just so severe. 'I felt like I had let so many people down, an entire country down, that had hoped the Opals would at least medal, that was the standard and we should have. 'That was a failure for Australia and you were a part of that. 'They were really hard times after that, I couldn't even stay after the Olympics, I left. I couldn't do the closing ceremony, I just felt so much shame on myself personally.' Phillips said she used the disappointment of Rio to fuel her stunning AFLW career, but added that she'll never get over it. 'I'm in a place where I've accepted it, but I won't get over it,' she said. Phillips joined Adelaide for the inaugural season of the AFLW and went on to win three premierships, two league best and fairests and two AFLW grand final best on ground medals, among a host of other individual accolades. She was inducted into the Australian Football Hall of Fame this year.
