OPTUS Stadium's turf is in a good position to bounce back and be ready for Thursday night's clash between Fremantle and Essendon, according to chief executive Mike McKenna, as the venue works through the most demanding month in its short history.
Thursday night's clash will be the third AFL game in six days at Optus Stadium, while the venue faces a short turnaround to be ready after also hosting Wednesday night's NRL State of Origin clash between Queensland and New South Wales.
Apart from the COVID seasons in 2020 and 2021, last weekend was just the third time AFL games had been played at Optus Stadium in consecutive days.
Eight major events are being hosted at the 60,000-seat stadium in June, including AFL, soccer, rugby league and rugby union matches, presenting logistical and turf challenges for the venue's staff and curators to navigate.
The packed schedule comes amid heavy rainfall on Wednesday morning and expected showers in the evening, but McKenna said extensive renovation works at the start of the year had left the Optus Stadium surface able to recover from short turnarounds between matches.
"When the (State of Origin) game finishes tonight, there'll be obvious signs that it's been played on, but by the time we get to tomorrow evening, it'll look like it's a new ground," McKenna told AFL.com.au.
"We've had some really heavy use to the ground in other years when the ground hasn't been as resilient and it's generally turned into a pretty good AFL field, considering how the grass hasn't been at its best in the past.
"We had renovation work done in the off-season and it's draining really well, so the water won't stay on the surface. That means you'll get some surface marking, but you won't get puddles and you won't get a lot of damage to the ground.
"I think we'll come out of this game into tomorrow and it won't be very noticeable, so I think we'll see a really strong result and we're really confident that it will play really well right through the season."
Optus Stadium expects to have more than 354,000 fans attend its major events through June, with another back-to-back schedule coming at the end of the month when the British and Irish Lions play the Western Force less than 24 hours before Fremantle's clash against St Kilda on June 29.
The logistical challenge of hosting back-to-back matches from different codes is extensive, with the changing of goalposts, line markings and logos just the start.
The transition to AFL mode on Wednesday night will start immediately after the State of Origin at 8.30pm and run until approximately 3am on Thursday morning, with other changes including the removal of Spidercam, signage being flipped, outlets being stocked and cleaning completed.
McKenna said approximately 30 staff will work on the playing surface after the State of Origin match.
"The curatorial work will be just basically replacing the divots and slide marks and washing out all of the advertising signs," he said.
"There's not many of those because there's a lot of virtual advertising, so mostly it's field of play lines that they get rid of.
"Those 30 people will be doing all that sort of work through until around 2am, and there will be a lot of people doing food and beverage preparations, cleaning and just getting the venue ready for the next game."
McKenna said an extended period of warm weather at the start of the AFL season in Perth had presented challenges with the surface, killing off a lot of the rye grass that is oversown following the cricket season.
The venue chief said curators would double down at the end of June, re-establishing a new breed of resilient rye grass sourced ahead of this season to have the ground in top condition through July and August and any AFL finals that are hosted.
