In honour of the great Gus Gould, today, one day after the NRL Grand Final, marks the start of a new campaign.

It’s called GUS – Give Us a Stadium – and I reckon it’s a fitting name given all the hot air that has been expelled over the Stockland Park stadium issue over the years.

At a rough guess, it’s been 3254 days since it was first mooted.

There was another stack of one-sided misinformation aired on a Sunshine Coast radio station at the weekend so perhaps it’s time to put a few facts, as they’ve been told to me, in black and white, especially considering the radio show in question doesn’t appear to be interested in giving Stockland Park, Manly or the Sunshine Coast Sea Eagles a say on the subject.

The mouthpiece for the anti-Stockland Park movement claimed on Saturday there will not be an NRL match played at the Kawana venue while it’s an oval shape.

The truth is, as the diagram of the stadium shows, even in its next stage of development, should that ever happen, the ground would be reconfigured into, yep, a rectangle.

Seating would be available on all four sides, in the main grandstand and three temporary stands, similar to those used for the Queensland Roar-Wellington game in August, as close to the action as at just about any other ground that hosts NRL matches.

The atmosphere would easily surpass the cavernous Telstra Stadium.

There would be several thousand people undercover and the remainder should get a decent seat with a clear view of the action, unlike what the crowd has had to deal with at the two Manly pre-season trials in the past two years.

As the Daily revealed last week, not only does Manly have plans to play at least one official premiership match on the Coast, it is likely to grow to two when they start work on a proposed redevelopment of Brookvale Oval.

It is almost guaranteed that, to maximise the attendance, these will be against two of the three Queensland clubs.

Twice a year, Coast league supporters will be able to travel just a short distance and see Manly against the Broncos or Cowboys or Titans.

Should an NRL side ever be based here, and that still has to be at least a decade or so down the track, the Stockland facility has plans to upgrade to a permanent 24,000 seat rectangular stadium.

Until then, the grass playing surface remains in place as a lure for potential one-off AFL practice matches or maybe a high-profile cricket fixture.

Some temporary stands on the eastern side are likely to be in place for Sunshine Coast Fire and Sunshine Coast Stingrays matches next season and something is better than nothing.

Before I get accused of being all pro-Stockland Park, this is where my thoughts on the stadium differ from those in charge down at Kawana.

I’d put money into building some permanent seating on the eastern side in this next stage, commit to the rectangular set-up now and end any debate over the joint.

As this column has said many times before, the inability of the Coast, with a population of 250,000, to host a high-profile football code event in 2008 is an embarrassment and an indictment on this region.

The current facilities are more befitting a country town of 40,000.
The stadium being proposed at Stockland Park should have been here 10 years ago, but it has suffered from a chronic case of dilly-dallying, especially from governments – federal, state and local.

Surely we can get something done soon.

And we can invite Gus Gould to the opening.

If you’ve got a view on Stockland Park or the Sea Eagles, let me know at sport@scnews.com.au.