By Tate Papworth
The Grand United Cricket Club isn’t looking so grand these days.
The clubrooms at JR Parsons Reserve are in need of constant repair and club president Carl Comensoli says they’re no longer fit to house the club.
“This is a condemned building, so we can only renew the lease one year at a time,” he said.
“It’s housed us well over the years, but it’s desperately time for an upgrade.”
The clubrooms have holes in the roof, a single male toilet, no dediacted female changeroom and asbestos throughout the building.
Mr Comensoli said the state of the rooms was making it hard to attract players.
“This whole park is fantastic – we have athletics, football, tennis and cricket,” he said. “It deserves to be better. We need decent changerooms to attract players.
“The rooms aren’t up to standard for a female cricket team. We have a few girls playing here now, but we’ve had a lot go to other clubs.”
Mr Comensoli said the club was forced to paint the main dining area with a mould repellant paint, which is bright yellow, and that asbestos had been identified throughout the building.
“There were about 20 stickers placed around the building warning of asbestos,” he said.
“We’ve been told it’s safe, but when you’ve got kids running around and you see the stickers everywhere, it’s scary.”
Mr Comensoli said Brimbank council has plans to upgrade the facilities, but he believes the time for waiting is over.
“There was an earlier plan on the reserve … scheduled for 2016-17. We were told then that this place would be completely redeveloped but nothing ever happened.
“We keep getting told there’s a sport development facility plan and our facility is allocated between 2023 and 2028,” he said.
“They’re saying it’s at the front end of that period, but it’s supposed to already be done.
“At the moment council is here non-stop. They’ve been pretty good in helping us out when we need things on the maintenance side of things, but it’s nearly every week.
“Today they were out the front patching up a hole; the week before was blocked sewerage.”
