Facilities highlighted at meet

INFRASTRUCTURE and sporting facilities are critical elements in developing football or indeed any sports, a workshop was told.
The recent two day two-day Fifa football infrastructure and facilities maintenance workshop held in Port Moresby brought together 10 member associations and Fifa experts to share experiences and discuss sustainable plans for infrastructure and facilities development.
With the introduction of the Fifa forward development programme since 2016, the region has seen an increase in infrastructure development and the meet was to discuss sustainable plans for the member associations (MAs). “Any development in infrastructure, especially football infrastructure, needs to be well-considered, inclusive, it needs to serve our people and have minimal impact on the environment in which it sits,” said Fifa’s Development Officer for OFC David Firisua.
“The workshop was focused on the need for our member associations to have a strong focus on an infrastructure strategy, which was long-term, and a maintenance plan that would be essentially an operations plan that sits underneath this strategy.”
Firisua said infrastructure and facilities are critical elements in developing football or sports. The workshop, in essence, brought together the MA’s and experts from Fifa in order to come up with a set of regulations that can connect strong public service components like sustainability and the impact on climate change as well as safeguarding and accessibility of the facilities into one single programme.
“We had case examples from member associations (presented during the workshop) on how they applied their perspective on these things in infrastructure development,” said Firisua.
“Then we had experts from Fifa contribute on the technical aspects of these things.
“Each member association spoke about the projects they have undertaken under the Fifa forward development programme since 2016 until 2022. These includes construction of their headquarters, technical centers, and pitches.”
An example of a sustainable facility that was highlighted during the workshop was the Freshwater Stadium in Vanuatu where the federation was able to get tax exemption on imported goods which saved cost and the saviing was reinvested back into tbuilding the stadium.
“As a result, they were able to solar electrify the spectator stands. They were also able to reticulate water from rainfall and store it in massive tanks behind the goal line so that could be used to water the pitch,” said Firisua.
The stadium was also built in a way that is accessible to all with ramps for anyone in a wheelchair that they could access from the car park by themselves and then sit down low on top in the best seat in the whole house (stadium) and watch the game.”
Firisua said with the increased infrastructure development, discussion and recommendations made surrounding climate change and MA’s having a maintenance plan in line with Fifa’s climate change strategy.