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9 hours ago, Victorian said:

An updated proposal for my logo to include indigenous patterns in the v medal

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I like the logo. The Big V to represent Victoria (their Aussie Rules State of Origin Team with a medal and indigenous artwork with the Southern Cross 

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53 minutes ago, RooBlu said:

And the quote of the night goes to Mick Malloy on "The Front Bar":

"The Commonwealth Games, it's like the Olympics, but without the cheating":P

Never a truer word said!

This is one of the major reasons I love the Commonwealth Games. It truly is about friendship, friendly competition and focusing on participation. Not having the dirty cheating countries does also help too!

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From today's Ballarat Courier:

The race is now on: Will Ballarat be game-ready by 2026?

As the 2022 Birmingham Commonwealth Games launches this morning, the looming question for regional Victoria is, 'will it be ready to host a comparable event in just 44 months' time?

"It is different," said Premier Daniel Andrews, as he stood in Ballarat's Mars Stadium in April. "It's a bit riskier than just running it in the middle of a large city. But to do this and to do it well, and we will, [it's] an opportunity like no other."

In the usual way of landmark announcements, the tenor of the revelation regional Victoria would play host to the 2026 Commonwealth Games was one of tantalising possibility and potential.

Much was made of the incomparable opportunity to leverage the games to expedite or attract additional state government investment into regional centres, as well as the economic benefit the games, by rights, should or would - in the opinion of government - inevitably afford.

In the weeks that followed, City of Ballarat chief executive Evan King echoed this sentiment by emphasising the once-in-a-generation potential carried by the games, which he declared were "far more than a sporting event".

"[It] will deliver legacy sporting infrastructure," he told a gathering of the city's most prominent leaders. "It will clearly deliver transport infrastructure; it is going to deliver housing infrastructure for us [and] it will deliver visitor economy opportunities."

Three months on, as we come to grips with terms such as 'legacy infrastructure' and the wider common language of major sports management, all eyes remain firmly trained on Birmingham, as it opens the Commonwealth Games 2022.

In just 12 days' time, however, those games - whatever their enduring impact - will be at an end, and the focus will inexorably shift to regional Victoria, which notably has around half as much time to prepare for the games than host cities of times past.

That much owes to the fact that the Victorian government was the only city across the more than 50 nations comprising the Commonwealth to make a bid for host-city status.

And, remarkably, that bid itself only materialised at the behest of a desperate approach from the Commonwealth Games Federation, which, at the time, was at risk of drowning in the ignominy of failing to secure a willing host for the 2026 games.

On any view, the compressed time frame within which the state has to deliver the games leaves little in the way of scope for delay or inertia so far as critical decision-making is concerned.

Added to this, as conceded by Mr Andrews in April, the risks attached to the delivery of the games via four regional centres - Ballarat, Bendigo, Geelong and Gippsland - considerably outweigh those which ordinarily accompany the usual delivery of the games through a major metropolitan city.

"The reality is that it is [local] councils which will play a major role in the delivery of the '26 games," said City of Ballarat mayor Daniel Moloney this week, citing the unique format of the 2026 games.

"As council, we're really excited about the opportunities," he went on to say, "but we also know that there's going to be a huge amount of work that will ultimately fall to each of the four key councils and given the tight timeline for the games, there will definitely need to be local intel."
 
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Premier Daniel Andrews (third from the left, back), announcing the Commonwealth Games 2026 at Mars Stadium in April 2022. Picture: Adam Trafford

"What's unclear, though, is exactly what needs to be delivered from a council point of view, and that's because the key infrastructure decisions [by state government] haven't been made yet."

So much is true; though the Victorian government has - to date - committed $2.6 billion for the games in the 2022/23 budget, nothing beyond the initial announcement of four athletes' villages and "modern sports infrastructure" has been disclosed regarding the particulars of that expenditure.

Most of those funds, moreover, the state government has said, will only be spent in 2025 and 2026; a state of affairs which hangs a conspicuous question mark over the capacity of all four regional centres to successfully execute the games come March 2026.

Perhaps with a view to dispelling or capitalising on this growing sense of unease or confusion, the City of Ballarat recently released a five-page advocacy document, specifying the perceived infrastructure requirements of the city as it prepares to host its allocated events, which include athletics, T20 cricket, boxing and may expand to rowing and the marathon.

Headlining this wish-list is a third potential train station somewhere within the vicinity of Mars Stadium, the duplication of Creswick Road - to create a "grand entrance" at the city's northern gateway, airport and bus network upgrades and, of course, an athletes' village in the form of mixed-housing.

There are, however, no plans currently afoot to internally restructure the organisation with a view to dedicating additional human resources to the planning stage of the games.

"I have fairly extensive personal knowledge myself already," Mr King told this masthead, adding that the city had not sent any delegation to Birmingham. "I have many, many friends that will be over there [Birmingham], and I'm obviously also working very closely with the state government that is sending a delegation there."

"I've also recently met up with the Gold Coast City Council to talk to them about learnings from when the Commonwealth Games were there."

Though, like Ballarat, none of the other three councils have sent a delegation to Birmingham, two - Bendigo and Geelong - are conversely funding internal director - or senior-level appointments to expressly oversee planning and delivery of the games. Latrobe City Council, similarly, is evaluating the resources it will require to successfully support the event.

The Courier understands the City of Ballarat will not follow this lead, leaving responsibility for this critical advocacy and planning phase to the "executive leadership team" as a whole; all of which may or may not, depending on your view, hamper the ability of the city to successfully leverage the infrastructure funding it requires to deliver the games to the requisite standard.

Speaking in Ballarat last week, Mr Andrews told reporters that though he had no news for Ballarat with respect to the games, the organising committee he chairs "meets often" and that there was "much work going on".

"You can be assured, from a planning point of view, that we will not allow anything to get in the way of delivering an environmentally sustainable, successful, thoughtful [games]," he said. "We will make good planning decisions in good time."

With the countdown on for the 2026 games and the expectation that the investment will leave infrastructure that benefits regional cities long after the 2026 fortnight-event, the lessons from Birmingham and decisions to come will make compelling reading.

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Esports likely to join full Commonwealth Games medal programme from 2026, as chief says if they did not harbour hopes of fully integrating it then they would not be piloting it in Birmingham next week

Commonwealth Games chiefs have confirmed esports is likely to join their full medal programme in 2026.

Competitive gaming is appearing at the Games in Birmingham as a demonstration sport, with the Commonwealth Esports Championships taking place at the International Convention Centre next weekend.

But it is now fully expected that esports will be included on the main schedule for Victoria 2026.

‘If we weren’t going to be doing it, if we weren’t thinking of moving on, we wouldn’t be doing this (the pilot),’ admitted Commonwealth Games Federation president Dame Louise Martin. 

We would never have given them permission to try and showcase this right in the middle of our Games.’

CGF chief executive Katie Sadleir added: ‘The Commonwealth Esports Championships that we are piloting is an example of how we are an organisation that wants to embrace the youth of the Commonwealth.

‘We signed a long-term commitment with the Global Esports Federation and there are some really good wins for us in terms of working closely with them.

‘The pilot is a pilot, we will evaluate it, but regardless we will have a close association with esports going forward. We like the fact we are doing it first. The phenomenon of esports is growing.’

Sportsmail revealed earlier this week that the International Olympic Committee are sending observers to the esports event in Birmingham with an eye on including it in future Olympic Games.

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On 7/28/2022 at 11:44 AM, Victorian said:

An updated proposal for my logo to include indigenous patterns in the v medal

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A tweak of the logo to make it more bubbly. Font is similar to a regional style and each host hub has a colour- Ballarat blue, Gippsland green, Bendigo yellow, Geelong magenta.

Each hub has a personalised logo that also features the local Indigenous name for the land.

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On 7/28/2022 at 10:29 PM, BigVic said:

Victoria 2026 will begin 20 years and 2 days after the beginning of the Melbourne 2026 Commonwealth Games and 2 days after the conclusion of the Milan-Cortina Paralympic Winter Games

Yes - and like 2006, Victoria's second Commonwealth Games will begin weeks after the conclusion of the second Northern Italian Winter Olympics... Turin 2006/Melbourne 2006; Milano-Cortina 2026/Victoria 2026.

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16 hours ago, Victorian said:

A tweak of the logo to make it more bubbly. Font is similar to a regional style and each host hub has a colour- Ballarat blue, Gippsland green, Bendigo yellow, Geelong magenta.

Each hub has a personalised logo that also features the local Indigenous name for the land.

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I think the concept is fantastic - although admittedly its a similar style of logo to Victoria (Canada) 1994. What are you using for your southern cross? Its not the right dimensions. Love the idea of each centre having its own colour scheme. Would be neat if the venues had their own colour scheme that related to each city.

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On 7/30/2022 at 8:51 AM, RooBlu said:

Mate there's absolutely no point posting links to newspaper articles that are locked out to non-subscribers. ;)

Sorry, I post it in case someone on here has access to the article. I don't.

21 hours ago, Australian Kiwi said:

There is no point to most of the spam he posts around here. Its all for some histrionic post count - and never for discussion. 

I disagree. There is a point to what I post and no, it is not called spam. It is a collection of everything Victoria 2026. What do you mean histrionic post count? I post it all so we have a collection/timeline of the events, articles and the story/development of the Victoria 2026 Commonwealth Games. I was shattered when the Brisbane 2032 original thread was deleted as we lost all that history. Now we have all this history together in one thread regarding the 2026 Games.

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2 hours ago, Victorian said:

Sorry, I post it in case someone on here has access to the article. I don't.

I disagree. There is a point to what I post and no, it is not called spam. It is a collection of everything Victoria 2026. What do you mean histrionic post count? I post it all so we have a collection/timeline of the events, articles and the story/development of the Victoria 2026 Commonwealth Games. I was shattered when the Brisbane 2032 original thread was deleted as we lost all that history. Now we have all this history together in one thread regarding the 2026 Games.

This is a discussion forum - not twitter. It clogs up all the threads and makes it difficult to engage in any meaningful conversation about things that are going on. This is a forum for everyone - not one or two individual's own timeline project. The lack of moderation is frustrating. 

 

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7 hours ago, Australian Kiwi said:

This is a discussion forum - not twitter. It clogs up all the threads and makes it difficult to engage in any meaningful conversation about things that are going on. This is a forum for everyone - not one or two individual's own timeline project. The lack of moderation is frustrating. 

 

People are then welcome to discuss the articles and information posted. If you don’t like it, you are more than welcome to leave or just not post/view the thread at all. If I was doing something wrong, moderators would have discussed this with me. They haven’t so I am doing nothing wrong. I’ll keep on keeping on. I am sure there are people that do appreciate my hard work and effort. 

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11 hours ago, Victorian said:

Sorry, I post it in case someone on here has access to the article. I don't.

I am not having a go at you. I am simply asking you to consider that if there is somebody here following the Comm Games from Ballarat, Bendigo, Geelong or the Latrobe Valley; and who is also interested enough in relevant local news articles from Bendigo to digitally subscribe to the Herald Sun, the Geelong Advertiser or the Ballarat Courier, then we might rightly assume that they would have already extracted those stories and already posted them on here in detail before they even hit Twitter.

Remember that the Twitter "headlines" are just that. They offer headlines only and absolutely no substance as their sole purpose is to encourage digital subscription and nothing else. ;)

Cheers. B)

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