AFL coach has expressed concern about the state of the field at Optus Stadium after a busy weekend of sporting events.
The weekend kept the Optus Stadium pretty busy and packed. On Friday night, Crystal Palace played Leeds. On Saturday night, Manchester United played Aston Villa. Grounds crews had less than 20 hours to fix the muddy field before the AFL game on Sunday. Unfortunately, heavy rain on Saturday didn’t help their cause.
Happenings on the field
On Sunday, players from both West Coast and St. Kilda often fell on different parts of the field, but no one was hurt. The Saints won by 28 points because West Coast players slipped and gave up a number of goals in the last quarter. Ratten used former Blue Luke O’Sullivan as an example of what could happen if a venue’s surface becomes unsafe. O’Sullivan sued both Carlton and the AFL for a knee injury he got at Waverley Park.
A chat with Ratten
Ratten said, “I wouldn’t like a player to get a long-term injury that affected them to never play the game again, or something like that. That is the worrying concern. If something did happen, would a player sue the ground? It happened in my time as a player. Luke O’Sullivan at the Blues sued.”
“So that is something they may need to consider when scheduling. It is a risk. The game is a risk anyway, but you’d hate to see something happen because of maybe the surface.”
Ratten said that he “knew straight away” that the surface at Optus Stadium could be dangerous on Sunday.
“We all went out before the game to have a look at it,” he said. “It felt shifting under foot. It was more of a mindset as a player and how you go about things. How you run flat out at the ball, can you twist and turn? The game wasn’t going to be called off; we were going to play, so we had to just adapt to it.”
What Adam Simpson had to say
West Coast coach Adam Simpson said he wasn’t too worried about the slippery conditions because his team was at the bottom of the ladder. When Simpson was told what Ratten had said about safety, he said, “He’s a great man Ratts and he’s got really good common sense. It’s a fair point.”
That said, when Fremantle plays Melbourne in a big AFL game on Friday night, the whole country will be watching.