Kysaiah Pickett jumps over the fence of Gosch’s Paddock to fetch an errant ball that has spilled out towards the morning stream of traffic.
The oval is one of the temporary homes the Melbourne Football Club divides its time between. Its administration and football departments are spread across AAMI Park, the MCG and Casey Fields.
It is a makeshift setup. Equipment is pulled out of a truck backed up as close as it can get to the fence, and there are issues with the remote Wi-Fi system staff are trying to set up.
While the players run drills, the minds of their bosses are 11 kilometres away – at Caulfield Racecourse, where a dream for a unified club precinct has been taking shape.
First floated in 2023, the site is the club’s top preference to become the permanent home of its men’s and women’s AFL and VFL programs. Preliminary designs feature an indoor training centre, event space and three multi-use fields.
Demons fans would be forgiven for thinking the project had petered out. There have been minimal updates since an early-stage feasibility study was published in 2024.
But behind the scenes, it has been an almost constant fixation for club officials, particularly vice-president Geoff Porz. With a sizeable funding gap and the racecourse sitting on crown land, securing state government support was a top priority.
Demons supporter Jamie Bunn, a long-time acquaintance of Steve Dimopoulos, said he helped get the club in the room with the minister last year, who at the time held both sports and environment portfolios.
The club also sought advice from external consultants FMRS – run by a group of advisers who were in the inner sanctum of former premier Daniel Andrews.
The appointment of well-connected businessman Paul Guerra as chief executive – announced days after the club met Dimopoulos – appeared to be yet another strategy to get a foot in the door.
Guerra sits on the board of Racing Victoria and at the time headed up the Victorian Chamber of Commerce, theoretically making him well positioned to get the Caulfield deal over the line. A source inside the club, speaking anonymously to detail internal conversations, said he had made it known that he had strong working relationships on Spring Street.
But less than a year later, the chief executive was shown the door, having not formally met Dimopoulos or replacement environment minister Enver Erdogan once, according to ministerial diary disclosures.
In fact, the first time Erdogan – the responsible minister for the Caulfield Racecourse Reserve Trust – met the club after taking over the portfolio was the day Guerra was sacked, as he happily divulged in last month’s budget estimates.
Amid the turbulence, the trust gave Melbourne 60 days to prove it could fund the project – which Erdogan said the Demons had priced at $100 million – feeding speculation it had stalled due to funding issues and pushback from the Melbourne Racing Club (MRC).
But a source close to the Demons this week told this masthead the deal, while complex, was progressing and had the support of the state and federal governments, the trust and the AFL. For the state government’s part at least, this claim appears to be true.
A special committee has been formed to handle the issue, and both Dimopoulos and Erdogan have recently backed the club’s proposal, the former declaring he was “very supportive” of and confident about the Demons’ future on the Caulfield site, the latter similarly commenting, unprompted, that he was “very supportive, for the record”.
In recent days, Erdogan has directed the trust to negotiate a contract with the Demons in good faith, to be finalised by early August, according to a source close to the negotiations.
It could opt to offer a peppercorn lease, something the state has afforded other sports clubs in the past.
This masthead has spoken to several sources familiar with the talks – both for and against the club’s move to the site – all of whom said the project would still require additional state and probably federal government funding to proceed.
Erdogan would not confirm or deny whether the state was planning to pitch in, saying he was yet to see detailed plans. The federal government said proponents were encouraged to apply for grant funding, declining to confirm whether Melbourne had submitted such a request.
The trust, Melbourne Football Club, AFL and Melbourne Racing Club all declined to be interviewed for this story.
Victorian Libertarian MP David Limbrick said the government should not be funding major sports that had their own revenue streams.
“If you look at AFL clubs, they’ve got memberships, they’ve got sponsorships, they’ve got broadcasting rights,” he said. “Why does the taxpayer need to continually pick up the tab for everything?”
But while the Demons may enjoy the government’s support, other stakeholders remain less convinced – including the club’s would-be neighbour, Melbourne Racing Club, which Erdogan said had put forward its own alternative proposal to outline what would be acceptable to it.
Among the key points of contention is a new tunnel slated to run beneath the racetrack to ferry players from the change rooms to the field, according to a source close to negotiations, who asked not to be named due to confidentiality constraints.
They said they understood Melbourne’s preference for constructing the tunnel was to “cut and cover” – a significantly cheaper but more disruptive option than micro-boring – prompting concerns within the racing industry that, if pushed through, the project could lead to racing being paused for 12 months.
Erdogan said he had first heard MRC’s alternative this week and was considering all options, with his top priority being to “maximise the benefit of land use”.
This sentiment, if abided by, will be music to the ears of community sports clubs near the contested site, who have called for any future development contract to factor in public use.
The Demons have until June 30 to stump up a business case and prove they have the money. Trust chairperson Sam Almaliki, who has expressed doubt about the feasibility of financing the project, last month said he would vacate the role early, and his departure also set for the end of June.
With the deadline fast approaching, a lot is still up in the air.
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Bridget McArthur is a sports affairs reporter at The Age, covering the intersection of sports and politics/business/economy/society.Connect via X or email.