The club is one of many calling on council and state government to provide funding for urgent upgrades of the sporting facility.

Club president Craig Swadling said the club was forced to make the best of a bad situation when moving their equipment into the toilet block.

“We had to do that just because of space issues,” he said. “The storerooms behind the existing facility were just bursting at the seams.

“We had an opportunity to relieve a bit of that burden by going over there, which we’ve done, but it’s not ideal.”

Mr Swadling said the time for urgent upgrades at the facility had already passed.

“We need a full upgrade of all facilities,” he said. “The size of the toilets are inadequate, we don’t have individual change rooms for our growing number of girls, and our ref facilities are pretty substandard.

“Everything is outdated unfortunately; it’s served it’s purpose here, and it’s time we had a complete upgrade.”

The club now boasts more than 170 juniors, and can draw upwards of four-or-five hundred people at a junior home game.

When this is combined with the crowds drawn by both the Senior Devils and Lions, the strain put on the clubhouse becomes too much.

“It’s not big enough,” Mr Swadling said. “The facility is so small because of the fact it’s shared by so many interested groups. 

“We’re one of the only fields left in both the Bega and Eurobodalla Shires where we have to negotiate field usage between senior rugby league, junior rugby league, aussie rules, and little athletics.

“When you take into account all those sporting groups are trying to get their fair and equal share of the facility, it just doesn’t work.”

Mr Swadling believes it is time for the rugby league clubs to have their own field as part of the facility.

“For rugby league in our community, we need our own facility,” he said. “We’ve got the numbers to back it up, so there’s absolutely no risk at all that the facility won’t be used to its full potential.

“We need our own field, our own amenities, an individual facility in its own right that caters to the game of rugby league.

“You look here now at how far away the people have to sit from the game, because we’re perched in the middle of an AFL field. We’re the only club in Group 16 that plays on an AFL field.”

Mr Swadling says the area behind the ground could be used for a rugby league field, but would need some work to get up to playing standard.

“The drainage isn’t great over there, and there’d be some excavations required to give us the space we need, but it’s a great site,” he said.

“It’s got great sun over there, there’s enough room to have whatever amenities we need, plus a playing field.

“It can be done, which is the frustrating part for us. The potential is there.

“It’s not like we’re trying to create something out of the possible. We can create a really classy facility over there.”

Having a specific field for rugby league would also reduce the strain on the main playing surface of Bill Smyth Oval.

“By the time we get to the end of the season, there’s more dirt than grass,” Mr Swadling said. “It’s unreasonable to expect this field to cope with what it does.

“If we had specified ovals that weren’t getting the footprint, we’d all be playing on a better surface. It’s not just us that are affected by this, it’s everybody.”

And even though Bill Smyth needs upgrades across the facility, the main issue is ensuring the safety of the growing amounts of girls at the club.

“The girls are our biggest issue at the moment,” Mr Swadling said. “We don’t want to wait for something bad to happen because we don’t have the facilities for our growing number of girls.”