Wagga City Wanderers shift home game to Cootamundra

Wanderers will host Hurstville City at Cootamundra’s O’Connor Park on Saturday, after the club announced Gissing Oval was unplayable due to “weeks of cold, wet weather”.

The announcement comes shortly after Wagga’s driest June on record, with just two millimetres recorded by the Bureau of Meteorology, as opposed to 96.2 millimetres in June last year.

The club was unable to move its games to another Wagga ground due to a lack of available facilities which met state league requirements, such as change rooms. 

Wanderers director Brendan Flanagan said playing next week’s home game in Cootamundra was also a distinct possibility.

“Gissing’s drainage is very poor, the field deteriorates very quickly, and once it goes, it’s gone,” Flanagan said.

“It doesn’t take much rain at all before we start losing grass coverage and the ground gets chopped up.”

Flanagan said the instillation of a synthetic pitch at Rawlings Park, which Football Wagga has pursued through state government funding applications over the past two years, would provide the ideal solution.

Football Wagga will submit its latest application for the game-changing grant later in the year, in the hopes that third time’s a charm.

Flanagan said Football Wagga “only just missed out” last year and that with additional support from council, he was “very hopeful”.