“We’ve said for some time that we think Parramatta was the No1 priority,” Gallop said. “When we play there the Wanderers nearly sell it out every time. So we’re pleased to see that would get a substantial rebuild up to 30,000-35,000. We’ve kept saying that anything lower than that is just a band aid – we need to be thinking about the future, and that needs up to 35,000.
“It would be fantastic to have a 65,000-seat stadium but we also support ANZ being refurbished as well. For a sport like ours we want as many high-quality stadiums in the city as we can get. We believe while Melbourne has a 95,000-seat venue in the SCG, Sydney needs to be competing for big games. When Liverpool came to Melbourne, when Manchester United came to Sydney, [as a city] you need to be in it to win and for that you need big stadiums. We’ll see what happens about that, and obviously it hasn’t been decided, but we’d be delighted about Parramatta.”
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