Transforming ANZ Stadium

By Alison Zell

In one of the biggest weekends at ANZ Stadium since the 2000 Sydney Olympics, more than 100,000 passionate sporting fans will pack the stadium across two huge nights as the venue hosts both an AFL and NRL Preliminary Final this weekend.

In less than 24 hours, the iconic Sydney site will transform from an AFL oval to a NRL field as almost 200 people work through the night to reconfigure the venue.

The stadium’s General Manager of Event and Business Development, Greg Sleigh, said it is an exciting time for the arena.

“It’s a historic weekend for the stadium but it’s also a historic weekend for Sydney,” he said.

“This place was built to host blockbuster events and this weekend we’ve got two so it’s the perfect scenario.”

Transforming the stadium is a huge logistical effort that will begin just after the final siren of the Sydney Swans and Collingwood match on Friday night.

“From an arena point of view, we’ll start at 11 o’clock on Friday night,” Sleigh said.

“We’ll start by removing some turf and some pans that the turf sits in which will probably take us six to eight hours.

“By about six o’clock on Saturday morning we’ll be ready to start moving the stands which will probably take us four or five hours.

“Simultaneous to all of that we’ve got to change all the signage, we’ve got to take the goal posts down and we’ve got to re-mark the field after we’ve taken the old markings off.

“So it’s probably a group of between 150 to 200 staff that we’ll have on site overnight to achieve full completion of the task by about midday on Saturday.”

Used to holding multiple codes back to back, the short turnaround is not an issue for the stadium and the move from the larger AFL oval to the NRL pitch for Saturday’s Bulldogs and Rabbitohs clash is the easier switch for the venue.

After Friday night, turf will be removed to create the rectangular shape of the NRL field and the portable stands will be reconfigured to the new shape.

“Through the history of this place, we’ve spent a lot of time going back to back and often three events in the weekend so we’re just going to do it on a slightly larger scale,” Sleigh said.

“Everything about this place means larger scale; means more people, more kegs, more chips … it just happens at a greater level.”

With at least 54,000 tickets sold for the Swans and Collingwood game on Friday and more than 40,000 sold for the Bulldogs and Rabbitohs clash, ANZ Stadium will be buzzing this weekend.

“This is a special weekend, you would never say it is business as usual,” Sleigh said.

“The majority of the colour that goes with both these events lives with the AFL and the NRL and what we as a venue need to do is just be ready to go at full throttle.”