SO MUCH has happened in the past 699 days.

Since Coburg last walked off its Coburg City Oval home after a big loss to Werribee on Sunday, August 4, 2019, we saw a thrilling Grand Final won by Richmond, then the entire COVID pandemic which has sent the entire world into a tragic and deadly chaos for the past 18 months and resulted in the cancellation of the 2020 season.

There has also been half a 2021 season that remains a week-to-week proposition due to the same problems that beset the country last year.

The Lions lured a host of VFL senior footballers from Richmond and Box Hill in particular over the break, and they have shown signs of a renaissance not seen since they last made the finals in 2008, including monumental away wins over Brisbane Lions and Port Melbourne as they played the first half of the season on the road.

While all that was going on, the builders were hard at work at Piranha Park, redeveloping the heritage-listed grandstand, playing surface and terraces along the eastern wing to bring the facilities into the 21st century and set the club up for the future.

The $7 million refurbishment of the grandstand, in particular the section that has been closed since a fire in 2003, started in March 2020 backed by the Victorian Government, Moreland City Council, the AFL and Cricket Victoria, with a new $300,000 drainage system also installed to safeguard the oval from bad weather.

There are two new large changerooms which can be split into four to cater for the women’s football which is now a big part of the Lions’ club, medical and coach’s rooms for each, an umpires’ changeroom for the first time and a gym for the players – with something as simple as a level floor, plus new interchange benches, goalposts and refurbished public toilets.

On Level 1 there is a new kitchen nearing completion and refurbished administration centre, while Level 2 features 200 undercover grandstand seats and a new function centre with a terrific viewing area that will give the Lions an invaluable year-round revenue stream.

Coburg general manager Seb Spagnuolo is excited for the players and supporters as the Lions return to Piranha Park with two northern derbies in the next two weeks – they face Carlton on Saturday before reprising the Battle of Bell Street against the Northern Bullants next week for the first time as two standalone clubs since 1998 – and they are not scheduled to leave home for the rest of the season.

“COVID affected a lot of things but luckily for our football club and this project it didn’t slow it down, they were able to continue to work through so we didn’t miss two years of football, and from now on we have seven home games in a row,” he said.

“We’re really excited for our members that they’re going to be able to come here seven weeks in a row and enjoy some footy.

“It has been a couple of years and our list has changed so much since the last time we played here –a lot of our recruits we’ve been talking to about how special our ground is and how we are looking forward to playing on our ground, and we get to do it for the first time this week.

“The women’s role in this project can’t be understated – it’s because of this project that we were able to introduce a women’s team to our club, because the old changerooms were just not suitable for female athletes – they now get to experience the benefits of this redevelopment more than most.

“By the time the full project is completed we’ll see some new terracing around the whole facility, there will be a new net behind the goals at the southern end and improved outdoor catering options like the canteen and so on.

“We’re probably looking at 2023 by the time the whole project is over, but for now the focus was on the changerooms, grandstand and the function room.”

Coburg was probably one of the least disadvantaged by the cancellation of last season, given the Lions wouldn’t have had a home ground, and Spagnuolo said coach Andrew Sturgess and his team had come through the challenges almost as well as could be expected.

“If 2020 had gone ahead it was going to be a really tough one, we would have had home games in Bendigo, Ballarat, all over Victoria,” he said.

“This year we’ve been on the road every week – we spoke about it as a group and Andrew Sturgess and the coaching staff have done a great job instilling some confidence in the players that if we get through the first half of the year we know what’s happening in the second half.

“Not that it becomes easier in the second half just because you’re playing at home, but our players have done some hard yards, a lot of miles and they’re looking forward to staying home from here on.

“We feel like we’ve improved in a lot of ways on and off the field as a football club –the trip to Brisbane was a new experience for our club and our players and it was amazing.

“Two losses by less than a goal really hurt, but those are the margins in the VFL at the moment, it’s a different competition this year that you lose a couple of games by less than a goal and it really sets you back.

“But this week (we play) Carlton, next week Northern Bullants and then Geelong again, which will be a great test because they did give us a bit of a touch up at Geelong, so we’re really looking forward to bouncing back in the next three weeks.”

Spagnuolo was most excited about the opening of the function centre in the next few weeks when the kitchen was completed.

“Our football club has never really had a non-football related revenue stream, so this function centre provides the opportunity to have a commercial arm of our football club that isn’t reliant on game day,” he said.

“It can run for 12 months of the year and we feel it’s a great space in Coburg – there’s not really that many spaces like this around so we should be able to do quite well out of it.”