The party, which confirmed its selection of the Park Road oval in a press release late last year, gathered on Monday night to discuss options with regards to funding and meeting with design consultants about the layout of the development. 

Member of the working party and local councillor, Andrew Banfield, explained what the next steps would be for the group. 

“We’ll be meeting with them [site consultants] in the next two weeks to go over a site survey and, once that’s done, they’ll say, ‘We think you need to put it here or here’,” Cr Banfield said. 

“From then, we’ll start chasing the grant funding and start putting a proposal together, getting the other sporting groups involved.”

The working party will be cooperating with the many sporting groups that also use Carr Confoy as a home ground to develop an area that will suit the needs of the Goulburn Hockey Association as well as other sports.

“There’s netball over there, cricket over there, soccer over there,” Cr Banfield said. 

“It’s on an area where a lot of activities take place, so we can’t just go over there and run roughshod over the established sports that are there.

“Everybody’s got to work together.” 

It is a new step in what has been a long process for both the Goulburn Hockey Association and the working party, which was formed in May last year. 

Goulburn Mulwaree Council mayor Bob Kirk expressed his pleasure with the working party, and said the goal was to have a development application submitted later this year. 

“With this resolution of [the] council, we are now able to get underway with the significant planning work that needs to be undertaken, with the goal of submitting a development application in September next year,” Cr Kirk said. 

Cr Banfield said it was too early to make any estimates on a completion date, but “in an ideal world, you’d have it done 12 months before your lease finished up at the Workers Arena.”