The St George Illawarra Dragons wish to further update Members and Partners with outcomes from their investigations into the power outage in the Kogarah area that impacted the event at UOW Jubilee Oval on Thursday, May 12 (Round 10).
The Dragons have been informed by Ausgrid, the energy distributor, that the issue was caused by a piece of 11,000 Volt equipment failing in one of the distribution substations that feeds UOW Jubilee Oval.
Ausgrid have confirmed through their own thorough investigations that “there is no evidence to suggest the failure was caused by an overload on the substation” caused by the Dragons or any other third-party.
Ausgrid have since worked to repair and review their network and have informed the Club that the network is operating normally at the venue ahead of the fixture against the Gold Coast Titans on Friday.
Furthermore, Ausgrid have noted that they will deploy field workers between now and game day to again inspect their equipment in the vicinity to verify that this remains the case.
The Dragons were still able to host the fixture against the Canberra Raiders on the day of the power outage, despite this external incident, due to the foresight of having power supply to UOW Jubilee Oval being split across two substations.
However, this power outage did complicate all areas and components of the Dragons Match Day experience and delivery including: Football, Corporate Partnerships, Memberships, Merchandise, Community, Communications and public retail operators.
At the time, Dragons Management and key Game Day Service providers reacted quickly to enable the event both on and off-field to continue.
The Club would once again like to acknowledge and thank the key stakeholders involved in the delivery of the event – Ausgrid, The NRL, Canberra Raiders, Channel 9, AVS Security, Stadium Australia Catering, Traffic Logistics and VIPeople Customer Service, Screencorp and CMG Audio Visual.
Their respective cooperation, flexibility and positive attitude in dealing with the extraordinary circumstances enabled the event to continue.
