The St George Illawarra Dragons have set up their new high-performance training facility right here at the Innovation Campus, and this week I got a tour of it courtesy of UOW.
The Bruce Gordon Centre is the kind of build you’d expect from a professional sporting club rather than a university campus. Change rooms wrapped in red LED lighting under a dragon motif cut into the ceiling, individual player lockers named and dedicated, the works. It’s a step up from what I remember of the old facilities, and a fairly unusual thing to find sharing a postcode with the tenants of an innovation precinct.
The tour was hosted by Adam Gilchrist AM, UOW’s global brand ambassador, who walked us through the facility before talking to the room about performance and mindset. Fair to say a former international cricket captain knows a thing or two about both.
For CJWEB, this is really a story about the neighbourhood. We’ve been based at the Innovation Campus since 2020, and it’s easy to think of it as a cluster of tech startups and research spin-offs. Having a professional sporting club move in alongside that mix is a reminder of how much this campus has grown, and it made for a good afternoon catching up with some of the other tenants over afternoon tea.
If you’re ever in the area, the Dragons’ new home is worth a look. If you’re a fellow Innovation Campus tenant and I haven’t met you yet, drop by.
