In what was a marquee year for the Southern Tablelands Football Association, with the completion of its long-awaited pavilion and the introduction of the Champions League and Champions Shield, one last piece of good news came through just before the New Year.
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Yesterday, the association announced that it had received a grant of more than $11,000 from the Veolia Mulwaree Trust - half of the funds required for new grandstand seating at the Cookbundoon playing fields.
The STFA will put forward the rest of the money for the new project, which is expected to be completed in late March.
STFA director of football, Craig Norris, said the grandstand will seat roughly 100 people.
"It'll compliment the new building," Norris said.
"It'll be more of a permanent structure, rather than temporary seating. We looked at a few different options, put our hat in the ring for the grant, crossed our fingers and hoped, and Veolia was very supportive."
To have permanent seating at the home of soccer in Goulburn, Norris said, will benefit the association in its goal to host more representative events.
"Having that extra permanent seating on the sides of the fields is always a bonus," he said.
The all-consuming nature of the pavilion project, which was fully completed last October, meant that the STFA had not considered where it would focus next.
But once construction on the building had finished, Norris said it quickly became evident that seating was a sensible step forward.
"It was hard with the clubhouse because you'd see things in the plans and think it's going to be good, but we didn't know what was next until we had the building sitting there and we thought 'Oh, we could do this'," he said.
"Veolia's next round of funding came up at a good time, and we had a bit of a plan and went for it, and we were lucky enough to get through."
After the grandstand is finished ahead of the beginning of the 2022 season, Norris was unsure exactly what would be next on the association's agenda, but said that new lighting might be the next major project it pursues.
"We'd love some lighting, especially across the bottom end of the park," he said.
"Training and night games would open up a lot of opportunities for different things. Shift work is such a big thing these days, so we could run a Thursday night comp under lights or something like that."
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