Bathurst and Dubbo are popping the champagne after a weekend where one welcomed visitors in their thousands for a massive event, and the other received news they will soon be doing the same.

The 2018 NSW Aboriginal Rugby League Knockout at Dubbo saw some of the nation’s best Indigenous footballers take to Apex Oval over the long weekend.

In addition to providing cracking entertainment, the players, coaches and supporters filled the city’s hotel rooms, restaurant tables and, in the process, cash registers.

To Orange east, news broke that Bathurst has been selected to become the first Australian city to host a round of the UCI BMX Supercross World Cup in 2020.

The event, which will double as an Olympic Games qualifier, will see a flood of visitors to the city who will all require the same services as those so enthusiastically patronised in Dubbo over the weekend.

The key to both? Outstanding sporting facilities.

Dubbo’s Apex Oval has long attracted top-level football games and, until Mudgee’s Glen Willow Sporting Complex arrived on the scene, was considered by many to be the finest football stadium in our region.

Meanwhile Bathurst’s BMX track is truly world class, and the result of a commitment from the city’s council’s to pursue a policy of heavy investment in sporting infrastructure that has been focused on bringing regional, state, national and even international competitions to town.

Their successes will have many in our own city scratching their heads and asking what we have to do to achieve something similar.

At this stage, Wade Park and the purpose-built rectangular field slated for the city’s northern perimeter seem our best – or only – chances of us attracting events of a similar stature in the future.

But with the former still a long way off being equipped to host first-class cricket or Aussie Rules fixtures, and no sign of movement at the north Orange site of the would-be rugby league, rugby union and soccer stadium, it seems a distant dream indeed.

Unless these facilities are made a priority, it’s hard to see us trumping our regional neighbours for these types of events in the future.