Oval so good it’s … boring!

By Paul Dunlop
THE green, green grass of Pakenham’s football home is the envy of the district.
Even AFL players are talking it up.
Long-held plans to install a bore to provide water at the Toomuc recreation reserve came to fruition over summer — transforming the playing surfaces from parched to paradise.
The move kept the main oval and other sporting fields a lush green at a time when many other grounds were off limits to footballers over the pre-season.
It also saved hundreds of thousands of litres of water from town supplies and dramatically slashed the reserve committee’s water bill.
As far as big wins go, reserve management committee treasurer Steve Moloney said this one was an eight-pointer.
“It’s always been a good reserve and now it’s better than ever,” Mr Moloney said.
“The biggest thrill for me came when the Hawthorn Football Club trained out here earlier in the year.
“Shane Crawford came up to me and said the main oval was one of the best surfaces he’d ever trained on. They couldn’t believe how good it was.”
The drought knocked around many Cardinia Shire ovals with most only recently recovered after months without decent rain.
But it wasn’t just the long, hot summer that had Toomuc reserve management keen to switch to bore water.
For years the high cost of maintaining five playing fields — two ovals, an athletics track and more recently two baseball diamonds — had been soaking up almost all the reserve’s funding.
“We were spending all our money on water just to keep the place alive,” Mr Moloney said.
Southern Rural Water won’t issue new bore licences in areas where groundwater allocations are already at capacity.
The volunteer-based reserve committee investigated several options in a bid to establish a partnership with an existing licence holder.
Enter Nar Nar Goon’s Red Gem Potato Growers and Packers, which agreed to transfer part of its allocation with the Toomuc reserve.
Cardinia Shire Council provided a capital works grant, helping cover the set-up costs.
Three years after planning began, sprinklers started putting the first bore water on to the reserve this summer.
Mr Moloney paid tribute to shire officers and councillors for their support and heaped extra praise on Red Gem staff, led by Joe Lenders.
“If it wasn’t for Red Gem it wouldn’t have happened,” he said.
“They took the attitude that if it was helping the football club and other reserve users it was helping the whole community.”
The reserve’s playing fields are used almost every day of the week by hundreds of junior and senior sports enthusiasts.
Mr Moloney said it was a joy to hear the praise from visiting teams when they came to play at Pakenham.
“Everybody who comes here comments on how good it is. The oval gets a lot of traffic, a lot of people use it, but it is still in great nick. The proof is in the pudding.”