City of Casey council has passed a resolution to purchase more land at Casey Fields – a multi-purpose sports facility intended to be used by as a base for its A-League club – extending the ground to around 185 acres. This land will be put aside for extra training fields.

Deputy mayor of the City of Casey Colin Butler told au.fourfourtwo.com that the council will back whichever one of the two A-League bid ends up in his area.

“For the A-League team, there’ll be five pitches all up including one main pitch," he said. "That will be the training facility for our A-League team.”

The FFA have three A-League bids from Melbourne currently under consideration. One from businessman Colin De Lutis, another from the Peter Sidwell bid and a third related to South Melbourne FC’s Jim Marinos.

FFA will get back to the bidders later this month, say sources.

The De Lutis and Sidwell bids would like to be based in the City of Casey. However, the franchise’s home games would almost certainly be at the new 30,000 plus all-seater facility at Olympic Park near Melbourne city centre (also used by Melbourne Victory and due to open in 2009).

However, training and administration of the Casey-based A-League club would be based around Casey Fields.

Nevertheless, Butler’s meetings with football officials has him confident that such a growing area – the City of Casey encompasses south-east Melbourne from Narre Warren down to Tooradin – can support a vibrant A-League franchise.

“It [an A-League franchise] can certainly work here in Casey," said Butler.

“It’s an enormous area to draw on, particularly with the amount of kids up to the age of 16, I think there’s about 60,000 of them, who’d love to watch their own team in the A-League.”

Butler also foresees a day when an academy and a mini-stadium would be built a at Casey Fields for games other than senior A-League matches, such as national youth league matches and women’s A-League fixtures.

However, funding would need to come in for any such stadium and academy development.

“Certainly the city of Casey won’t be paying for it. We’ll certainly make the ground available and the [training facilities] but they will have to find some funding from somewhere for the stadium,” added Butler.

“Soccer is pretty flushed with funding at the moment, aren’t they?”

And he hinted that AFL football may have missed a trick by ignoring the area: “I can’t believe the AFL won’t help Melbourne come out here...

"They are going to lose some ground if the soccer people get out there.”