Cr Cox said for some people, playing weekend sport was "their mental health outlet".

"It is something that anchors people's lives," Cr Cox said.

"It's a thing they look forward to on the weekend and when an entire season is wiped out like that it actually has a really big impact on people."

Cr Cox's motion said grounds like Roy Johanson Park in Figtree or Nicholson Park in Woonona could be used on a temporary basis and the council could work towards access to grounds owned by the University of Wollongong and the Department of Education. "It's a question as to whether there's anything we can do to explore saving this season by opening up, maybe a few extra grounds." Cr Cox said.

"To the question about cricket being interrupted, I think it's the reason I said 'community sport'," she said.

"My heart is with soccer, but it applies to all sports and you can easily foresee a future where it is 40 degrees every day for a lot of the summer weekends and it's not safe for the cricketers to play and they need to extend their season.

"I think this equally applies across those codes and especially cricket, which is out there in the hot sun."

"It's about planning now knowing that we're going to have droughts and we're going to have wet years again," Cr Cox said.

"What can we do to be hedging these things? I know a lot of clubs immediately look to synthetic pitches as the answer and it could be that it's part of the picture.

"But the one synthetic pitch that we already do have has provided no relief really for washed-out games because it's already 100 per cent in use."

Story by Glen Humphries in the Illawarra Mercury, 30 July 2024.