Completed during this year’s pre-season, the club’s change rooms, warm-up area, cardio room and football storage area underwent a major face lift in time for the beginning of the Swans’ 2013 AFL campaign.
The change rooms, which had not been updated since the club’s move to Sydney in 1982 and included lockers from the club’s South Melbourne days, received a major facelift this summer, with new lockers, lighting, an entertainment system and air conditioning installed to create a more modern space for the playing group.
Sydney Swans Football Planning & Operations Manager, Peter Berbakov, told SwansTV’s Beyond the Boundary program that the aim for the new rooms was to provide enough space for training and match day as well as being a social hub for the players.
“The main brief was to provide full-time players enough space to put all of their apparel and equipment, but we also wanted to make it a nicer environment for the players to come into,” he said.
“Part of that is the style of the lockers that we created, we added the air conditioning because it used to be a bit of a musty, dungeon place down in the rooms, and also just lightened it up.
“It’s not just a place where the players come in and get out, it’s actually a place they can stay in for an extended period of time.
“They can watch the TV, talk to each other and socialise together.”
With tradition in mind, the new lockers list the names of every South Melbourne/Sydney Swans player to have worn each respective number with distinction and also feature a miniature premiership cup next to the names of players’ who have achieved the ultimate team success.
Berbakov said while the main brief for the refurbishment aimed to update and modernise the facility, conserving the club’s history was also important.
“An important part of the whole refurb was making sure that we retained some of the history and the tradition of the area,” he said.
“Rather than making it too modern we prioritised getting the players’ names back on the lockers, and the players drove that as much as the architect and anyone else.
“It’s a really nice look to have that history back up on the lockers and the little premiership cups for anyone who has achieved that milestone.”
While tradition was of the utmost importance, innovation was also not overlooked in the refurbishment of the Swans’ facilities.
The club’s old cardio room, located on the far right side of the team’s warm-up area, has been transformed into a state of the art altitude room.
Berbakov said the altitude room allowed players to make the most of their cardiovascular training.
“The benefits are training at a reduced oxygen level or saturation so players can actually train their cardiovascular system without having to work as hard as they would at sea level,” he said.
Berbakov said he expected the altitude room would be utilised in the Swans’ next pre-season campaign in place of an international training camp.
“Obviously the cost of going overseas for a large altitude training camp is quite significant so we feel as though there is a cost benefit to have a system set up here that we can use all the time,” he said.
“We’ve started to do some initial testing on that front for the coming pre-season.”
