The Brisbane Roar players will take an extra moment of reflection before stepping out onto the Suncorp Stadium pitch tomorrow night as Queensland remembers one of its worst ever natural disasters.
The Brisbane Roar players will take an extra moment of reflection before stepping out onto the Suncorp Stadium pitch tomorrow night as Queensland remembers one of its worst ever natural disasters.
This time last year, the Sunshine state was ravaged by floods with three-quarters of Queensland declared as a disaster zone and along with millions of other properties, Brisbane Roar-s home venue was heavily inundated with water.
The Roar had two home matches, against Wellington Phoenix and Melbourne Heart, re-located to Gold Coast-s Skilled Park as Brisbane-s iconic stadium looked to rebuild from the disaster.
Flood waters rose up to row five, submerging all of the facilities in Suncorp Stadium-s Western Stand, including both the home and away changing rooms, match-day operations rooms and press conference room amongst other things.
Since then, the Brisbane club has seen major success on the football front – a maiden Hyundai A-League premiership, the most memorable grand final in the competition-s short history and an Australian record of 36 games undefeated – but the main man behind it all, Head Coach Ange Postecoglou, urged the football community to reflect on the bigger picture.
“It-s just been a remarkable twelve months,” he said.
“There were so many emotions throughout that year, highs and lows, both for the state and in the sporting sense.
“Sometimes you don-t get a chance to recollect but when you think about the journey, it-s been incredible and I-m sure there will be a lot of people at the game tomorrow night that will take a moment to think about all that.
“It was a real devastating time for so many people and as I said, it feels like ages ago but it really wasn-t.”
Brisbane Roar will pay tribute to the incredibly selfless Queensland spirit with a moment-s applause prior to kick-off against Sydney FC and if fans at Suncorp Stadium look close enough, they-ll be able to spot the flood water level marked on the goalposts with tape.
The emotion within the squad and in the stands is sure to drive the team to a performance to be proud of, according to Postecoglou.
“In recent times, we get caught up in the winning and losing of football games but just take a moment to think about how many people were affected this time last year,” he said.
“Whether it was football clubs, sporting clubs, or people in general, a lot of our supporters were badly affected, some have never moved back.
“I-m sure even from the players- point of view, it will give them that extra bit of drive.”
Even returning attacking weapon Thomas Broich, only a honourary Queenslander himself, took pride the spirit shown following the floods.
“I have to say that I really enjoy the Queensland spirit,” the German said.
“It was terrible what happened to all the people but the community really fought this together and that was a great feeling.”
Brisbane Roar play Sydney FC on Saturday, 14 January at Suncorp Stadium. Kick-off is at 6.45pm with tickets available from Ticketek or at the gate.
