Gissing Oval is set to have new and improved changerooms, providing a safe space for female players to prepare and debrief after matches. Photo: Wagga City Wanderers.
Gissing Oval will soon receive a major facelift to the tune of $900,000 – its first major works since the 1960s.
As one of Wagga’s busiest weekend sporting venues, the oval is set to receive drastic changes to its changeroom facilities, including the ground’s first female-friendly changerooms.
Wagga Wagga City Council’s (WWCC) Manager City Growth & Regional Assets Ben Creighton said the oval was meeting its use-by date, but the new assets would push the lifespan of the oval well into the future.
“Gissing Oval is an aging facility. At the moment, it’s only got two changerooms, and those changerooms were constructed quite a long time ago,” he said.
“WWCC has since endorsed the recommendation to move forward with the construction of additional change facilities at Gissing Oval, as well as upgrading the existing changerooms.
“Both lots of changerooms will be converted into female-friendly changerooms.
“Gissing Oval provides a facility for a lot of the Wanderers soccer as well as other sports so it’s really important that we do provide those facilities. So this is really a great step forward and a very big improvement for such a popular ground.”
Mr Creighton said there were still a number of facilities that required female changerooms and that WWCC would continue to work on making sure every ground eventually received the necessary upgrades.
“I know there’s still more to go. There’s still a number of facilities that have been constructed over the last 50 to 60 years that will require additional upgrades to make them female-friendly, as well as additional changerooms,” he said.
“With the advent and then the growth in female sports, at the moment there’s a lot of days now where both female and male players are playing on the same day so it’s really important that we have multiple facilities available so everyone’s comfortable to play sport.
“I think over the last five to seven years, we’ve completed a number of similar projects in terms of these female-friendly changerooms, and it is a rolling program.
“If you look at our Recreation, Open Space and Community Strategy 2040, it identifies the fact that all of our change facilities ultimately need to get to this sort of status. But it’s not something that you can do overnight.”
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