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The recurring design link between several Australian Football League (AFL) projects is not a single architect or standard blueprint. It is a planning approach: put AFL and AFLW teams in genuinely shared high-performance facilities, then connect those facilities to academies, community programs and, where possible, public events.
Brisbane, Hawthorn, Sydney and Adelaide apply that idea to very different sites, budgets, histories and delivery stages. Their buildings should be compared as related responses to common needs—not as identical examples of one proven formula.
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The common link is shared use, not identical architecture
Modern AFL training-centre projects increasingly ask the same question: how can one campus serve men’s and women’s elite teams without creating a first-class and second-class set of amenities? The strongest examples also make room for academy pathways, staff collaboration, community activity and match-day or event use.
That is a design brief rather than a construction type. A new suburban arena, a remediated former landfill and an adapted heritage hall will require different structural, environmental and operational decisions. What links them is the relationship between users and spaces:
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- AFL and AFLW players can access equivalent leading facilities and shared staff resources.
- Elite training can sit alongside academy development and community programming.
- The building can respond to its existing site, whether that means drawing on club history, remediating contaminated land or reusing a heritage structure.
- Public access and event use are considered alongside private high-performance operations.
The project accounts do not establish that co-location automatically improves performance, recruiting or finances. They describe intended facilities and operating relationships, not controlled outcome studies.
Brisbane Lions: Brighton Homes Arena was planned for AFL and AFLW together
Brighton Homes Arena was designed from the outset to provide equal facilities for the Brisbane Lions’ AFL and AFLW teams. Before the project, the teams and staff had worked from separate Brisbane locations. The new arrangement brings them together, with shared spaces intended to support collaboration and cost efficiency. The Brisbane Lions design account and Populous project page present the equality objective as a central part of the brief.
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The architectural language references the Lions’ Fitzroy history, particularly Brunswick Street Oval, while also using cues associated with Queenslander homes. Timber, brick and raw concrete give the complex a material connection to local character and club heritage rather than treating it as a generic sports shed.
The historic references are paired with a contemporary performance campus. The point is not to recreate Brunswick Street Oval, but to use recognizable forms and materials while organizing a facility for current teams, staff, academy users and events.
Academy and event capacity
The Brisbane Lions and Populous account says the Lions Academy supports more than 600 families and young players annually. The same account states that Brighton Homes Arena hosts 20–25 AFL events per year, including AFLW home games, pre-season matches, VFL and Academy games, and community or other events. Those figures are descriptions on the project account, not an independently audited attendance study.
Why equal access is visible to players
Nat Grider, identified by Populous as an AFLW Brisbane Lions Premiership player, described the effect this way:
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“It makes us as female athletes feel really valued, knowing that we have that same respect that they give to the men.”
Anika Wells, identified by Populous as Federal Minister for Sport, called the use of the same state-of-the-art facilities by elite female and male athletes “a game-changer for sport.” These statements express the project’s equality rationale; they are not evidence of a measured causal effect on results.
Hawthorn’s Kennedy Community Centre joins elite sport to a public pavilion
Hawthorn Football Club’s Kennedy Community Centre takes the shared-use idea beyond co-located teams. Its project description by Good Design Australia describes a facility in which elite AFL and AFLW training is connected to publicly accessible community spaces.
A central spine organizes different levels of access
A central spine links the high-performance facility with the Community Pavilion. That connection gives the project a legible transition between spaces used primarily by athletes and staff and spaces intended for community visitors. It is a practical planning move: the campus can host public activity without requiring every visitor to enter secure performance areas.
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The site imposed a major delivery constraint. Staged remediation and gas capping took place before building works on the former landfill site. In other words, the community-and-performance concept depended on environmental preparation before the visible building could proceed. This is a reminder that a facility’s design story includes ground conditions, safety controls and sequencing—not only its finished rooms and façades.
The Kennedy Community Centre therefore differs from Brisbane’s heritage-led material narrative. Its defining response is the connection between elite and public uses, combined with the technical work needed to make the site suitable for construction.
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Sydney Swans HQ adapts a heritage hall for teams, academy and community use
The Sydney Swans’ headquarters uses adaptive reuse rather than starting with an empty site. The project occupies the Royal Hall of Industries at Moore Park. According to the Populous project page, the completed facility serves the men’s and women’s teams and the academy, while also providing community facilities and areas available for external hire.
Why adaptive reuse changes the design problem
Reusing the Royal Hall of Industries means the project must work with an existing building’s volume, structure, heritage character and circulation. Instead of treating the headquarters as an isolated training building, the design gives a historic public venue a new sports and community role. The result is a different expression of the same broad link: high-performance operations are placed in a building that remains connected to wider public life.
The academy pathway
Populous describes the QBE Sydney Swans Academy pathway as serving 700 young people across New South Wales. That figure is presented on the project page and should not be read as a current audited enrolment count. It does show how the headquarters is framed as more than an AFL first-team base: the academy is part of the facility’s intended user network.
Completion status
The Sydney Swans HQ is stated by Populous to have been completed in early 2023. That makes it a completed example in this comparison, unlike Adelaide’s still-planned Thebarton move.
Adelaide’s Thebarton project extends equal facilities to AFL, AFLW and SANFL
The Adelaide Football Club’s planned Thebarton facility is intended for the club’s AFL, AFLW and SANFL teams. The club says the project will provide equal leading facilities for men and women. Its Thebarton Headquarters FAQ, accessed 13 October 2026, expected the club to move around the end of 2026.
Read the schedule as a forecast
“Around the end of 2026” is a forecast in the FAQ, not confirmation that the move or construction was complete on that date. Readers evaluating the project should distinguish the club’s intended timetable from a completed-facility report.
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Cost figures need careful attribution
The same FAQ contains two development-cost descriptions: approximately $100 million and, later, a $105 million bespoke facility delivered in partnership with Tandem Building Group. Because the figures conflict on one page, the safer formulation is to identify the more specific $105 million figure as the club’s later description rather than present one definitive, independently verified total. The difference may reflect changing scope or a different stage of reporting, but the FAQ does not resolve that discrepancy.
A broader team mix
Including the SANFL alongside AFL and AFLW makes Thebarton’s brief broader than a two-team headquarters. It must support different competition calendars, development needs and operational users while maintaining the club’s stated principle of equal leading facilities for men and women.
How the four projects compare
The following comparison separates the recurring planning ideas from the specific conditions of each project.
| Project | Equal AFL/AFLW access | Academy or community connection | Site and heritage response | Status and delivery notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brisbane Lions — Brighton Homes Arena | Designed from the outset for equal AFL and AFLW facilities; teams and staff moved from separate Brisbane locations into shared spaces. | Lions Academy supports 600+ families and young players annually; 20–25 AFL events per year are stated, including AFLW, VFL, Academy and community events. | References Fitzroy’s Brunswick Street Oval and Queenslander homes; uses timber, brick and raw concrete. | Project account describes the completed arena and its operating uses; figures are attributed to the Brisbane Lions/Populous account. |
| Hawthorn — Kennedy Community Centre | Elite AFL and AFLW training are part of the same high-performance facility. | Central spine connects high-performance areas to a publicly accessible Community Pavilion. | Former landfill site required staged remediation and gas capping before building works. | Good Design Australia’s project account emphasizes sequencing and public access; no completion date is established here. |
| Sydney Swans HQ | Serves men’s and women’s teams in one headquarters. | Includes the academy, community facilities and areas available for external hire; Populous describes 700 young people in the New South Wales academy pathway. | Adaptive reuse of the Royal Hall of Industries at Moore Park. | Populous states completion in early 2023. |
| Adelaide — Thebarton | Planned for AFL, AFLW and SANFL, with equal leading facilities for men and women. | Academy or public-space details are not established in the cited FAQ; the brief covers multiple club teams. | Specific site-response details are not stated in the supplied club FAQ. | Club FAQ accessed 13 October 2026 forecast a move around the end of 2026. The FAQ gives both approximately $100 million and a later $105 million bespoke-facility figure; treat the cost as unresolved. |
What “shared facilities” should mean in practice
Co-location is meaningful only if the spaces, schedules and standards are equitable. A building can put teams under one roof while still separating quality or access. The project descriptions point to several practical tests.
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Equivalent performance environments
“Equal” does not require every room to be identical. It means that AFLW players are not assigned inferior training, recovery, medical, analysis or change facilities. Brisbane’s brief makes this explicit by planning equal facilities from the outset; Adelaide states the same objective for its future campus.
Shared staff and collaboration spaces
Brisbane’s design account says shared spaces were planned for collaboration and cost efficiency. Those spaces can reduce duplicated functions and make cross-team work easier, but their value depends on operating policy: teams still need secure, appropriately sized areas and schedules that prevent one program from dominating the other.
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- RUBBER AUSSIE RULES FOOTBALL – Manufactured from a premium blend of natural and synthetic rubber, the FORZA Torpedo AFL Training Football will provide an exceptional level of performance which will help training sessions to replicate the feeling of a competitive match.
- ALL-WEATHER GRIP – Specifically designed to offer an impressive level of grip throughout all weather conditions, the outer panels of this Aussie Rules training football feature multiplex pimples. This unique texturing ensures heavy-rainfall will not cause this ball to become slippery during training sessions, in turn helping players retain possession.
- 100% HAND STITCHED – To ensure this ball maintains its shape and size, its stitching is done by hand. This luxury technique creates an Aussie Rules footy ball which can be used throughout all intense AFL training drills without suffering panel separation.
- LATEX BLADDER – With a bladder produced from high-quality latex, you can rely on this Aussie Rules football training ball to retain the optimum air pressure level for a considerably long amount of time, meaning you can spend more time on the training field.
- SUITABLE FOR ALL AGES – Available in size 3, 4 or 5, the FORZA Torpedo AFL Training football can be used by Aussie Rules players of all ages. The size 3 is suitable for players aged 12 and below, while the size 4 is for AFL players between the ages of 13 and 15. Finally, the size 5 training footy ball can be used by Aussie Rules football players aged 16 and above.
Controlled links to the public
Hawthorn’s central spine and Sydney’s community facilities illustrate two ways to connect public activity with elite sport. Public access can support education, events and club visibility while security boundaries protect athletes. The layout must make those boundaries understandable rather than relying on ad hoc crowd control.
Academy continuity
Brisbane’s 600-plus families and young players and Sydney’s stated 700-person academy pathway show why development users matter in the brief. Academy athletes need suitable training and teaching areas without displacing senior teams. A strong plan treats the pathway as a scheduled, spatially integrated use rather than an occasional visitor program.
What the AFL facility guidelines do—and do not—specify
The AFL Preferred Facility Guidelines for State, Regional, Local, School and Remote Facilities (2019) provide a useful principle for inclusive football infrastructure: “The provision of well designed, welcoming and inclusive change facilities is critical to the continued growth of Australian Football and to optimize the range of potential users.”
That guidance supports the direction visible in the club projects, especially the emphasis on welcoming change facilities and broad user access. It is not, however, a specification for elite club headquarters. The document covers State, Regional, Local, School and Remote facilities, and its example layouts are indicative rather than construction plans.
The guidelines recommend independent architectural advice tailored to the users, budget and function. That qualification matters when comparing these projects: a club headquarters with broadcast, sports-science, academy and security requirements cannot be designed by copying an indicative community-facility diagram.
A practical way to evaluate an AFL training-centre design
When a new project is announced, readers can assess its substance with four questions:
- Are AFL and AFLW facilities genuinely equivalent? Look for stated access to performance, medical, recovery, analysis, change and staff spaces—not only shared branding or a common address.
- Who else can use the campus? Check whether the plan names academy athletes, schools, community groups, match-day visitors or external hirers, and how those users connect to secure areas.
- What is the site forcing the designers to solve? Heritage reuse, landfill remediation, gas management, transport, flood risk or an existing stadium can shape the building as much as the sports brief.
- What is confirmed? Separate a completed facility from a proposal, a forecast move date, a stated project cost and an independently verified final cost.
These questions prevent a common mistake: treating every new club building as evidence of one universal AFL model. The projects share priorities, but their architecture and delivery are site-specific.
What cannot be concluded from these examples
The available project accounts establish design intentions and selected operating facts. They do not prove that shared AFL/AFLW headquarters produce better win rates, athlete availability, recruitment, attendance or financial returns. Those outcomes would require comparable data over time and a method for separating building effects from coaching, funding, list quality and broader club changes.
Nor do the examples establish one common architect or a universal design standard. Brighton Homes Arena, Kennedy Community Centre, Sydney Swans HQ and Thebarton have different histories and constraints. Their defensible common link is the planning logic: equitable elite provision, deliberate connections to development and community users, and a design response to the particular site.
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