By Jonty Ralphsmith
The electronic scoreboard at Keysborough’s Rowley Allan Reserve looks set for an upgrade.
Various issues have plagued the scoreboard for more than five years, with two games this year being without the electronic scoreboard, resulting in a volunteer needing to operate the manual one.
The Burras’ recent clash with Mordialloc was the most recent game affected, but president Manny Scata was optimistic the issue would be fixed by next week.
“I was advised that there is an upgrade plan for the scoreboard next week which should alleviate all the problems we’ve been having,” he said.
“It’s been a while but we’re getting a solution.”
The president said the physical scoreboard was fundamentally robust – it is the computing and communications system that were failing.
Therefore, viewers would not notice a change but Mr Scata was confident the new system was generally successful, reducing the chance of continual issues.
In 2019, the council addressed another issue relating to the scoreboard.
The wi-fi connectivity was continually dropping out, which the council took action to address.
Mr Scata thanked Councillor Tim Dark for continuing to put the issue of the scoreboard on the agenda.
Cr Dark has raised the issue at several council meetings in the past, and did so once again on Monday 11 July.
“(The issue) has been going on for a very, very, very long time now and I think now that we’re receiving correspondence from the umpires and people that are trying to run a game about the stresses and issues with it, whether we could look at potentially getting an external audit for someone to see exactly where the issues are,” he said, further stating the importance of having a conversation with the club.
“I think now it is becoming quite a pressing issue.”
Cr Dark was told the council would make it a matter of priority.
The cost of the upgrade would be covered by council.
Keysborough play in Division Two of the Southern Footy League and its next match at the ground is on Saturday 6 August against Skye.
