If anything his ties to the sanfl should have given us an insight to what they had done.Mate. You criticised 1990s perspective on Olsen's relationship with the SANFL and its impact on this deal. All I'm saying is that it's clearly plausible that it hasn't been an arms length negotiation. More likely than not, in my view.
As for the bigger question, unless we can do a deal to repurpose govt or council land, there is no way in hell we are getting within 10km of the CBD. Even 20km is a stretch, although you'd probably jag something at Gepps Cross.
As much as it blows my mind that a croquet club can have exclusive use to a piece of the parklands, rich farmers can park their horses in an inner urban parkland for reasons(?), SACA can build a structure on the parklands and turn part of it into a cricket ground, that netball SA can have a square kilometre of concrete down for courts, that a restaurant can have permanent structures on the parklands... yet the biggest sporting organisation in the state, that puts dollars into the ACC coffers and city businesses, can't get a slab of it to establish facilities that would be mostly open to the public... thebby really represents our final opportunity to get close to the CBD and, given how important that is to us, you would have thought we would have been far more diligent in covering off contingencies.
Sounds like the ball was dropped by both us and sanfl but not due to his ties.