West Coast chief executive Trevor Nisbett last night took the opportunity to expand on the club’s plans for a new training base when he spoke to radio station 6PR.
Nisbett explained that the local community stands to benefit from several initiatives detailed in plans for the club’s Lathlain headquarters.
“[The second training oval] will be the community oval, that’ll be used by everyone; all and sundry community groups, schools, anyone who needs to use it during the day,” Nisbett said.
“We’ve got some flagship programs like the Wirrpanda Foundation who don’t have a permanent home and we want to house them out there.
“We’ve been working with the Town of Victoria Park on a number of their community programs that they want to incorporate and we’ve been working with the Perth footy club who run a lot of community programs now.
“So it’s going to have a massive community aspect and I think all we need to do is not be discouraged by Dr Nahan’s comments, but actually to present again and make sure that we’ve got everything in order.”
Nisbett says the club is looking forward to building a base for the Eagles in the Community programs to run from, in addition to other facilities open for the broader community to use.
“We hope to have a social club and that will also incorporate the community at large.
“We’ll have a café there as well, a museum, somewhere that the West Coast Eagles supporters can call home.
“Hopefully it will be embraced by the community and they’ll be able to use those facilities as well.”
With rumours of ruckman Nic Naitanui signing a new deal continuing to circulate, Nisbett said he expected the deal would be done in the coming days.
The club is also working on re-signing other profile players, namely Andrew Gaff and Matt Rosa, and Nisbett indicated that negotiations were progressing well.
“They’re in the pipeline already,” Nisbett said.
“Certainly we’re dealing with Nic and then the other guys, hopefully we can get them done as well over the next few weeks. It’s an ongoing process and it is every year.”
