CLANCY OVERELL | Editor | CONTACT
Sydney’s stadium precinct of Homebush will be absolutely gridlocked this Wednesday night, as the Matildas semi-final coincides with the biggest international country music concert in recent history.
On Sunday, the 33-year-old North Carolina country megastar Luke Combs arrived in Sydney by private jet, ahead of his Wednesday night gig at Qudos Bank Arena.
The New South Wales rail network will once again be tested, as the poorly located Olympics site hosts more people than would have ever been there during the 2000 games.
With the state’s ailing transport infrastructure expected to clog up under the stress of a rowdy combination of nearly 200,000 soccer and country music fans – event organisers had initially hoped that the Luke Combs fans would be mostly commuting from West of the Blue Mountains.
However, it seems that these high hopes of two East and West thoroughfares minimising traffic around the stadiums may be nothing more than a pipe dream – as it becomes clear that tens of thousands of Luke Combs are actually city boys that will be jumping straight onto Parramatta Road after knocking off work in the CBD at 5pm.
One of these die hard concrete cowboys is Mosman man, Stirling Flatley (33) who traces his love of country music back to his great-grandfather’s polo horse stud in the Hunter Valley.
“Not sure how I’m gonna get to Homebush” says Stirling, who hasn’t used public transport in his life, except for the Sydney ferries.
“I’ll probably take the Hilux in”
With his half-button Ringers Western shirt and moleskin trousers ready, Stirls just needs to visit his local Westfield to find a Bullzeye trucker hat, before covering the entire outfit in some turmeric powder from his his mum’s spice rack – to give it that extra rural edge.
“Yeah…” he says, while de-polishing his RM Williams boots with a toothbrush,
“Hopefully Combsy’s crowd should drown out the soccer crowd”
“Hope it isn’t too hard getting in there. The traffic in the city does my head in
