I HAVE brought back from Australia a lot of thoughts, ideas and plans on how we should develop, build and utilise a new stadium in Warrington.

I was going out there before I joined Warrington to look at the facilities and some of the principal stadiums but with us looking towards a new facility here in Warrington there was even more meaning to my trip and it turned out to be a great opportunity.

The five-day trip was about the design of stadiums so that we can then consider how we wish to persue our own stadium, not only in developing and building it, but the whole set up on how we can offer it as a total facility for the community.

Some of the things which caught my eye were the comfort that the fans have in some of the new and primarily all-seater stadiums in that part of the world - the Sydney Football Stadium, Parramatta Stadium and North Sydney Bears' stadium on the central coast at Gosforth.

Customer comforts for the general punter and the quality of the corporate facilities were outstanding.

These were key areas that I wanted to look at in terms of how we develop and go forward in a new stadium ourselves.

The biggest stadium I visited was the Sydney Olympic Stadium, for its opening and the opening to the National Rugby League season. I have been fortunate in my life to have been at stadiums which can hold 80,000 to 90,000 people - the majority of them being in America - but I've never been to a stadium that kind of sucks more than 100,000 people in and then after the event clears them within an hour. It was just unbelievable.

There was a train per minute which circled the stadium and went off to different mainline junctions to take people to wherever they were going. There was something like 600 coaches which came in, circled and picked up their passengers. There was car parking for something like 8,000 cars on multi-storey car parks all around the stadium.

It was a phenominal set-up and there is no doubt in my mind that logistically the Sydney Olympics in 2000 will be a tremendous success. Thankfully, Rugby League had the opportunity to open the batting there and there are going to be other major events at the stadium such as State of Origin, the Anzac Test between Australia and New Zealand, the Grand Final and they may put the final of the Tri-Nations tournament at the end of the season involving Great Britain there too.

The other thing that caught my attention from the trip was the depth of talent that the clubs have got over there, not just at reserve grade but all the way down to their under 16s development squads.

It was pretty scary seeing the quality of kids they've got there. This is all done through their conveyor belt system where kids' first first touch with rugby at six, seven and eight is a quality one. They get quality coaching at that age so they're learning good habits from a very early age.

We've got some lessons to learn in this area. The majority of the kids play and in a good climate. I heard something positive the other day of one of our junior leagues, up to the age of 11, switching from winter to summer. If this information is right, then I believe it is a very good step forward.

On a final note, we have now formerly received a letter from Parramatta tying the two clubs together which is great and now we are officially launching our link.

The association is strong now and we will look at what we can do in the future with regard to developing playing links, educational links and developing links around the scientific end of conditioning for players, such as supplements. From a marketing perspective we spent a long time together in Australia - I gave them some ideas and they have given me a couple of good ideas too.

We also have a little link tied up with Saracens Rugby Union Club and now I am working with my mate in the States at Green Bay Packers so that we will then have the three links which we want as a club.

This column is sponsored by Copy Centre, Stockton Heath, Warrington.

Converted for the new archive on 13 March 2001. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.