News · Sport · Tarro + Lambton
Female footballers at one Newcastle ground went from 11 to 144 in two years. The city is spending $2.5 million so the change rooms catch up
City of Newcastle has started more than $2.5 million of upgrades at Tarro Reserve and Johnson Park at Lambton, two grounds where women’s and girls’ sport has surged. Female cricket across the two fields is up more than 130 per cent since 2024, and the number of female footballers at Tarro has grown from 11 in 2024 to 144 this season. The money buys the thing that surge has been missing: change rooms built for the people now using the grounds.
The council has begun construction on new amenities buildings at Tarro Reserve and Johnson Park, jointly funded by City of Newcastle and the NSW Government’s Level the Playing Field Program. Each ground gets a building with female-friendly change rooms, an accessible toilet, a canteen, a referees’ room and storage. Construction at both is expected to finish by early 2027.
The numbers are the story
The reason for the spend is not a mystery, and the council does not treat it as one. On its own figures, female participation in cricket at the two grounds has expanded by more than 130 per cent since 2024, and the number of female footballers using Tarro Reserve has grown from 11 in 2024 to 144 this season, with more expected. Read those two numbers together and the direction is unmistakable: demand from women and girls has arrived at these grounds faster than the buildings around them could keep up. A change room is not glamorous infrastructure, but it is the practical difference between a ground a female team can train and compete at and one it cannot.
Councillor Peta Winney-Baartz, who chairs the council’s Sports Infrastructure Working Party, put the facilities in that participation context. “Tarro Reserve and Johnson Park have seen female participation in cricket expand by more than 130% since 2024,” she said, and the new change rooms “will support increased participation by women and girls, allowing them to train and compete in a safe and inclusive environment”. The buildings also add accessibility for people of all ages and abilities, she said, at grounds that host football, cricket and touch football.
Who is paying, and the state angle
The upgrades are co-funded through the NSW Government’s Level the Playing Field Program, which exists to build exactly this kind of facility. The Minister for Sport, Steve Kamper, framed it as infrastructure catching up to a trend: “Sporting infrastructure needs to keep pace with the growth of women’s sport,” he said, and the fund is meant to remove “barriers for women and girls in sport” so that participation happens in an environment that feels safe and supported. For a duty that is shared between a council and a state program, the split matters less to a player than the result: a building that was not there before.
Part of a wider works list
Johnson Park has already had other work done, which is why the amenities building is the piece that completes it: the council has installed new LED floodlighting to modern training and match standards, improved drainage, and built a new playground in the ground’s south-west corner in December. To make way for the new amenities building, the old playground at the Bindera Road and Wyong Road intersection will be demolished, and the existing toilets in the south-east corner will come down once the new building is finished. Newcastle’s sports-ground program does not stop there either: the council says it will also upgrade Waratah Park this July with a new toilet block near the playground, part of a Waratah Park masterplan its Sports Infrastructure Working Party endorsed in 2025 after community consultation. Taken together, it reads as a council working steadily through a list of grounds, and letting the participation data decide the order.
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