A planned rebuild of Brisbane’s ageing Gabba stadium could help prevent a third repeat of an embarrassing blackout during a major sporting event.
Play was halted with 12 minutes remaining in Friday’s AFL clash between the Brisbane Lions and the Melbourne Demons after an underground cable-joint failure left the teams and more than 30,000 fans in the dark.
State energy company Energex was able to restore the power supply roughly half an hour later, allowing Brisbane to hang on for the win after the Gabba’s second such incident in recent years.
Addressing reporters at the venue on Saturday, Gabba general manager Mark Zundans applauded the efforts of staff and emergency services, adding a response was in place after a similar blackout forced the cancellation of a 2019 Big Bash League game.
“We’ve done everything that we can to try and mitigate last night, (it) was probably demonstrable that we were able to get the game up and going again,” the stadium boss said.
The Queensland government plans to rebuild the Gabba ahead of the 2032 Olympics and recently revealed the estimated project cost had blown out from $1 billion when it was announced in 2021 to $2.7 billion.
A competitive tender process for the rebuild is expected in the second half of this year, with construction slated for the four years to 2030.
Mr Zundans said the electrical infrastructure was one of many issues that could be addressed with an upgrade.
“There’s no question that there’s a lot of ageing infrastructure within the Gabba,” Mr Zundans said.
“This is probably an example of something that we hope to rectify moving forward.”
Barron River MP Craig Crawford said the incident brought back memories of community football, and underscored the need to rebuild the venue.
“A lot of people grew up on sporting grounds playing under car headlights,” Mr Crawford told reporters.
“Olympics or no Olympics, it’s still time to rebuild the Gabba,” he said.
-AAP
