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AUSTRALIA DAY ACROSS THE REGION INSIDE TODAY
Double act Twins Jack and Leo Bawden started at Moe’s South Street Primary School on Monday. They were among thousands of fresh-faced youngsters across the Valley to begin their school journeys. FULL STORY - PAGE 12
GAME FACE ON MUCH like the Canned Heat song, it appears the Commonwealth Games might be going up the country. With Victoria emerging as the front runner in a seemingly one-horse race to be Australia’s bid for the 2026 Commonwealth Games, there is a groundswell of support for regional areas to be included in the games’ official programming. Latrobe City has been slated as one municipality of potential, along with other major regional Victorian centres
such as Shepparton, Bendigo, Ballarat and Warrnambool. Latrobe City has no shortage of highquality sporting infrastructure, with facilities like the Gippsland Regional Indoor Sports Stadium and Gippsland Regional Aquatic Centre both of professional standard. As far as Latrobe City Mayor Kellie O’Callaghan is concerned, the region is ready to host Commonwealth Games events if called upon. “If there is a chance for us to host significant scale sporting events here in Latrobe we would be very
open to it,” Cr O’Callaghan told The Express. “These opportunities don’t come along very often. International level sport in Latrobe is something we know the community would absolutely love and we now have the capacity with the facilities that we’ve got. “Whether it is the pools at GRAC, whether it is the international-standard stadiums that we now have in place particularly with the Gippsland Regional Indoor Sports Stadium in Traralgon, we’ve had some fantastic basketball games there so far and we have some
netball heading our way, but there is any number of sports that could utilise that facility and certainly the full size FIFA pitch at Latrobe City Sport and Entertainment Stadium would allow us that opportunity as well. “Also just our gyms for any of their strength and conditioning training, and wouldn’t it be fantastic to see all the bikes up at Haunted Hills Mountain Bike Park if there is an opportunity to host people up there too? Continued on page 3
HART WINS PRO-AM
SHOWTIME AS ELITE BASKETBALL HITS THE VALLEY - PAGE 10
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TRARALGON CUP A WINNER