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Elmington Park Gets Second Face Lift Following May Floods
For the second time is six years, Elmington Park will be getting a face lift.
NOTE: This means the Roos home game on June 19, 2010 against the Columbus Jackaroos has been relocated to an alternate ground! We will be using Rhodes Soccer Complex (in MetroCenter) for this match. Here is the LINK with the information (scroll down).
Long-time fans will remember the 2004 season when Metro Parks, in conjunction with the Nashville Kangaroos, planned and finally executed on a leveling, widening, and resurfacing of the Kangaroos home field portion of Elmington Park, effectively taking the Roos out of the place where Roo footy was born in 1996, albeit only temporarily.
Metro's work included leveling the field, installing a sprinkler system, and moving the eastern and southern berms back, creating more space for footy. I know, it is not level now! But what they did was more level than what it was prior to this work. Plus, they pushed the eastern slope back (giving us more space to widen the field), and they pushed the southern berm back while routing the drainage ditch.
Speaking of that drainage ditch: it used to run through the goal square. In the 2001 rendition of "Lake Elmington", after a particularly satisfying (not to mention wet and muddy) Roo victory over the Atlanta Kookaburras (6.14(50) to 3.7(25)), many of the Roos celebrated with a Slippety Slide through the goal square (minus the actual plastic tarp!).
The benefits of the drainage system were never more evident than during the 2007 version of "Lake Elmington" when more than three inches of rain came down in less than a hour, right in the middle of our match against the St. Louis Blues. The teams and a number of die-hard (some say insane) fans watched as waves of water rolled east to west across Elmington, and drained off the field, all according to plan. After a 35-minute delay, the game resumed and while wet, there was no standing water!
The sprinkler and drainage system following the 2004 work has helped keep Elmington a beautiful field to play footy on. However, the wear and tear on such a popular park coupled with the May floods has taken its toll. Elmington Park will be closed for six weeks (maybe a little longer) for this resurfacing work to be completed.
So once again, the Roos have been forced to find an alternate home ground. During the 2004 renovations, we played our match against the Cincinnati Dockers at the MetroCenter Soccer Complex (now renamed Rhodes Soccer Complex), and came away with a dominating win 15.14(104) to 4.4(28). The other two home games that season were played at Ezell (home of the Nashville Metros). So, the Roos are undefeated at Rhodes and looking to stay that way on Saturday.
In addition, the Nashville Metro League's next two matches will be at Rhodes as well. The Metro League, featuring all your favorite Kangaroos players representing the Rutherford (County) Redbacks and the Wilson (County) Wallabies, will be in action on July 1 and July 8 2010 as these two evenly matched teams continue their battle for supremacy in the 2010 Metro competition. These matches are on Thursdays and will start at 7 pm. With the Redbacks leading the season series 1-0, the Wallabies will be looking to even things up. If you can't get enough live footy, this is a great way to feed your addiction!
