The most fun part of Jason King’s job as Chief Executive Officer of Manly Warringah Sea Eagles is his game-day ritual of walking around Four Pines Park pressing flesh with his people.
For these are his people. He is of these people. King came up in Frenchs Forest, went to school across the road at St Augustine’s College, and slid down the eastern side of Brookie Hill as so many generations of grommets have before and since.
That he also captained the club across a 14-year stretch that included 239 games and two premierships marks King as a popular fellow indeed. Particularly now that he’s deemed responsible, at least in part, for all the winning.
No better time, then, to advocate for a new stadium. Much as people love the dear old chunk of concrete and grass wedged between suburbia, school and Brookvale industrial estate, it is dated – at least outside the $32.5 million Northern Grandstand and Centre of Excellence which was officially opened in 2022 and which houses the offices, board room, weights room, wrestling dojo, and other business end facilities of a professional sports franchise.
And so, given “Fozball” and all that winning, King’s other gig of late, apart from wandering the ground accepting back-pats, handshakes and proffered babies for kissing, is to convince locals that the club’s home ground needs renovation, rejuvenation – and that rate-payers should, in part, pay for it. He wants to convince locals, particularly non-footy fans, that a win for the Sea Eagles is a win for all.
“The conversation’s been happening for a while and it’s going to be sort of a steadfast focus of mine,” King tells Manly Observer. “We’ve been listening to the government and listening to different stakeholders for many years, and we’ve been iterating the model. How can we have private investment combined with potential government investment and come up with a concept that’s quite convincing for everybody?
“What I mean by ‘everybody’, it’s not just a rugby league facility or a sporting facility. It can have so many other wonderful things that make it a really good, community environment, a community asset, that takes us into modern times.”
King points to the potential for residential and commercial development. Of a “precinct-like” atmosphere as cities such as Singapore and Barcelona have built, in which the football ground is the heart of a district of cafes, bars and open space.
King adds that the existing Centre of Excellence in the Northern Stand is used regularly by the club’s “charity partners” and that the club’s sports business academy uses the club’s sporting IP to educate the next generation of sports administrators, personal trainers and leaders.
“Is there potential for more education use and broader community initiatives?” King ponders. “Can we have retail and commercial precincts on the Pittwater Road side of the facility?
“So all this is really exciting stuff, and we think we’ve got quite a compelling concept, and it’s now sitting down with private and public sectors to say, let’s make something happen.
“Because it’s not an option to do nothing. We need to come together, put our collective efforts in and come up with a really compelling solution for the community.”
All sounds great, right? So, how much? King can see plenty of positives from $200 million.
“It all comes down to the model and how you do it. We’ve done some feasibility where we think you could do a broader redevelopment around the $200 million mark and then you have some residential which helps with that overall cost,” according to King.
“But at the same time, we’re realists. If $200 million is too ambitious to make it all work, can you do it in tiers? You might focus on the Jane Try Stand to start with, you might focus on the Southern Stand to start with and do it in steps that may be a little bit more sustainable for public and private investments.
“We’re open to a range of different options. Nothing’s off the table. But we’re all certainly very committed and the board is very committed to really making some progress.”
At the moment, of course, “progress” has largely amounted to telling people what they’d like to do. An artist’s impression has turned up in the papers with a concept of “New Brookie”, all gleaming glass and roofing and turrets. It’s long been a Manly play. Every few years Warringah MP Tony Abbott would be front page of The Manly Daily in a Sea Eagles jumper, pointing at something.
King’s been around long enough to have heard it all before, too.
“The conversation’s been ongoing for a while about what we do more broadly with the venue. And the easiest way to sum it up is to say it’s not an option to do nothing. So you compare Four Pines Park, which we all absolutely love, and treasure; we’ve got terrific history. There’s something really special about coming here, and everybody loves it. Opposition teams hate it, which is just the way we like it,” King says.
“But we cannot keep going in the current trajectory. It’s a point in time where we need to make this venue more contemporary for a range of different reasons.
“First and foremost, it’s about the experience of our fans and our corporate partners when they come to our venue. We want that to be modern. We want the whole game day experience to be a really rich one.”
King was appointed CEO of the club in November, following 10 years working for the NRL. He says his game-day laps of the ground have been the real “pinch me” moments of his tenure.
“I try to walk around and say ‘g’day’ to a lot of people and the support and warmth I feel from our supporter base has probably been the key moment,” he says.
“To come back to the club I’m so passionate about and to be so much closer to the game and closer to our fans and have a chat with our fans … there’s been moments I’ve thought, ‘Wow, this is really, really special. Rugby league and the Sea Eagles are so important and so special to so many people and it’s just terrific to be a part of it.”
It wasn’t always so terrific. Indeed it was, of course, only back in April that King and his board made the difficult, surprising and criticised decision to sack Anthony Seibold just three games into the season, and appoint Keiran Foran as interim head coach. Surely it was too soon. Does Seibold not get more time? And what of Foran? He was still playing six months ago.
But all misgivings evaporated instantly when the team put 52 points on the Dolphins, and set in train a winning run which sparked the organic phenomena known as “Fozball”. King’s been in footy since he was a boy. He can’t think of a bounce-back like it. And Manly now sits tied third on the NRL ladder, and Four Pines Park, aka “Foz Pines Park”, is full fit to burst each game.
King wants to thank everybody – fans, sponsors, readers of Manly Observer.
“I must say a really big thankyou to your readers and the community more broadly, the support has been felt so much by everybody at the club and is certainly helping propel us in the direction that we want to go,” King says.
“It’s so special to see it and going past KFC down at Manly Vale and there’s Kieran, a former team mate of mine and a mate of mine and now the head coach of the Sea Eagles proudly being displayed. Our valued partners in Four Pines, ‘Foz Pines Park’ and everybody getting behind it.
“We’re certainly feeling the warmth and the support and it’s helping to drive the club forward, which is terrific.”
