Six-a-side club tackles council but council has possession of the ball
About 1,000 players in Pittwater will miss out on summer soccer this year as Northern Beaches Council has moved matches to the synthetic field at Narrabeen Sports High School.
The FootballSSG (small side game) club has 2,700 players, and matches were at Rat Park in Warriewood from 2008 until 2024, when the competition moved to Warriewood Valley fields.
“(Council) told us that we (could not) return to Rat Park this year or ever,” FootballSSG manager Stuart Cole told PL. “The maximum number of our mini fields that we’re going to be able to get onto that high school field is six. At Rat Park, we could have eight. At Warriewood Valley, we were using 10 of 12 fields.”
Council told PL that using synthetic fields for six-a-side football was not a decision it took lightly, but was in the public interest to manage the resilience of grass fields and to use synthetic as much as possible.
It cost ratepayers $40,000 to re- sow and rehabilitate Warriewood Valley fields for eight weeks following FootballSSG’s use in 2024, council said, and community cricket could not be played on the field. Similar damage had previously been caused at Rat Park.
“Small-sided soccer is a high intensity sport which is proven to cause significant damage to turf sports fields,” council said. “FootballSSG can have eight simultaneous games, six per side, a total of 96 players at one time on a standard full sized soccer pitch. Its impact is four times that of an average senior soccer match on the same sized pitch.”
Mr Cole disputed this, saying that Warriewood Valley was not historically in good condition and that Google Street View images showed there was no grass on the field four weeks before the club began playing there.
“Their narrative is that our competition destroyed the field and that’s why we can’t play there or on any grass field in the future,” Mr Cole said.
Mr Cole said there was no parking for an estimated 400 cars at the Narrabeen field, with the only options being street parking or parking at Warriewood Square, about a 20-minute walk away. Council said it was working to find a solution for the start of the season in September, including negotiating earlier access to the synthetic field to facilitate an additional competition round.
