Launceston City and Riverside Olympic frustrated over soccer fixtures

Launceston City are facing the prospect of players getting changed in shipping containers while Riverside Olympic have been hit by the late postponement of all five Northern Championship matches.

Statewide and regional competitions are due to kick-off on Saturday, but the season's fixtures are still not locked in with ground availability and upcoming A-League matches affecting their rostering.

Both clubs have been left fuming by the situations which have thrown their season preparations into disarray.

Olympic president Stuart McCarron told players all Championship games rostered for Ulverstone this weekend had been postponed due to unavailability of grounds.

"It's disappointing to say the least that we only officially found out about this on Friday," he said.

"I really feel they should have seen this coming. The whole process has been extremely disappointing. Many of our players organised for time off work and made plans around travelling 300 kilometres.

"And we understand the games at Ulverstone are now being scheduled for the semi-final day of all statewide cups (May 29), so they're assuming we're not going to make them."

Meanwhile, two busy weekends of sporting activities at the Prospect Park complex have caused major headaches for Launceston City who are arranging delivery of up to four shipping containers to serve as makeshift changerooms.

With six games scheduled on each of the next two Saturdays (NPL, Northern Championship women, men and reserves, under-18s and under-16s), the club has to coordinate getting 200 players and officials through two changerooms with just three showers in each.

A footy gala day this Saturday followed by the Tasmania Devils girls' match on April 27 mean the changerooms at neighbouring Prospect Park will be unavailable.

City's senior president Danny Linger said the situation is totally unacceptable.

"I'm glad the venue is getting a lot of use but not happy about the lack of support to help us build new changerooms," he said. "I feel we have been set up to fail.

"We are very happy and excited with the improvements the (Meander Valley) council has done over time and in particular the recent upgrade to the lower pitches, but extremely disappointed for them not to support the construction of new changerooms on council land instead preferring us to go it alone to build on our own privately-leased land."

It is understood that Football Tasmania is investigating how to support Western United's upcoming A-League matches in Launceston.

When United are set to visit on Saturday, April 17, all four NPL matches will be played in Hobart. The only scheduled statewide match in the North is Launceston United's Women's Super League game against Olympia, which could become a curtain-raiser to the national league men's match.

The Glenorchy v Devonport men's fixture, currently rostered for KGV, may also be moved to form part of the A-League undercard.

In a scenario similar to Hawthorn AFL fixtures being in competition with State League and NTFA matches, some would like to see no Tasmanian soccer played on April 17 in order to maximise the crowd at UTAS Stadium.

"I think we should cancel all games that day and maybe have a couple of curtain-raisers to get as many people at York Park as possible," Linger said. "The most recent Western United match (against Brisbane Roar at AAMI Park) only got about 1900, surely we can easily beat that and get a decent crowd in."

In a further fixtures complication, Northern Rangers will host all five of their round two Northern Championship fixtures at Riverside's Windsor Park complex as the club does not have access to the NTCA Ground until April.

The NPL Tasmania competition will kick-off on Saturday with City hosting champions Devonport and Riverside travelling to Kingborough.