Orange Council could look to bring A-League match to Bloomfield

It certainly seemed that way when Councillor Jason Hamling discussed the future of the Bloomfield sports precinct.

Speaking at the launch of the landscaping masterplan, the chairperson of the Sport and Recreation Policy Committee said: "We will be able to hold major athletics championships, we will be able to hold rectangular sporting games such as soccer, such as A-League soccer, such as rugby union and such as rugby league games.

"We're just catching up to where other regional centres are with their rectangular fields."

But when asked on if the council had engaged in conversations with professional leagues such as the A-League, Hamling was more tight-lipped.

"We're always in talks with the codes about coming out here and just making sure that people from the Central West don't have to go to Sydney and don't have to go to Canberra to watch major sporting fixtures," he said.

"We want them to come to Orange. We've been pretty lucky with Wade Park and hosted lots of big feature games down there and now we're going to go that step further.

"We're always in conversations, I don't want to say where we've been and what we've done, but we're always engaging with major sporting fraternities."

But a few soccer games isn't all they have their eye on.

"We can see a synthetic athletics track which Orange has been screaming out for for years," Hamling added.

"We will be able to hold most junior carnivals that we can get our hands on. Any junior carnival that comes to Orange, that's money for the city. We want kids out there playing sport. We don't want them sitting on their iPad or phones. We want to give them the facilities to go out and play sport and be healthy and be mentally healthy as well.

"The sporting facilities will be A grade and we'll be able to make our facility the number one west of the mountains."

Orange Mayor Reg Kidd pointed to the recent Olympic Games as a reason for promoting the athletics track.

"Another thing that is grossly overlooked is we do not have a public athletics field in Orange and one of the fastest growing sports is junior athletics," he said.

"If a young person wants to continued with their athletics here is Orange they end up going to Dubbo or to Bathurst to train."

Work commenced on the $25 million Orange Regional Sports Precinct on Tuesday to prepare the site for major earthworks that are planned for later this year.

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