AV Case Study: St Joseph’s Playing Fields
Videopro wins an AVIA for this PA and video distribution solution across a massive and flood-prone site – all on a surprisingly modest budget.
18 December 2025
St Joseph’s College in Brisbane is an independent boys Catholic college that caters to students from Year 5 to 12. Locally known as ‘Terrace’ because of its city location on Gregory Terrace, the college has no extensive playing fields on-site.
That said, the college has a proud reputation for sports, largely thanks to the foresight of Brother Rodgers’ astute purchase of a tract of land in Tennyson for the sum of £12,500, back in 1961. Now transformed into a set of a dozen playing fields, complete with grandstand, canteen and more, the site is busy year-round with sports including rugby, soccer and cricket. Importantly, the complex also houses the Terrace Boathouse, which accommodates the school’s extensive rowing activities.
While the location, on Oxley Creek, just where it meets the Brisbane River, is ideal for rowing – it proved to be a liability when the facility was inundated in the 2011 and 2022 floods. The latter event was the catalyst for a comprehensive redesign and rebuild of the facility’s PA and paging system as well as the video distribution system. The goal was not just to replace the original infrastructure but to implement a modern, flexible solution that would be expandable to serve the school’s long-term needs.
RULES OF ENGAGEMENT
The school sought advice from a number of sources, including consultants Ashburner Francis and Q-SYS distributor, Technical Audio Group, before calling on Videopro to put together a comprehensive solution.
Videopro’s Mark Chaplin summed up the basic requirements. “The field is used by multiple stakeholders: the school themselves, as well as external parties using outside broadcast equipment for streaming various sports, cricket, soccer or their main sport, which is rugby. So, we had a fresh start to redesign all the audiovisual across the spaces, including video transport and a new field paging system.”
The Biamp Community horns project across the oval to spectators on the other side, while QSC speakers cover the audience seated in the grandstand.
BROADCAST BUNKER
Videopro outfitted the ‘Broadcast Bunker’ beneath the grandstand with a new Server Edge rack to house the video and distribution gear and also provide a home for the Q-SYS control system and network amplifiers.
Working with Lightware’s John Ungerer, they expanded on an existing fibre installation that fed the LED scoreboard sited at the east end of the main field. Using the latest Lightware UBEX encoders and decoders and a new fibre switch, the system now enables high-quality, low-latency video transmission from multiple video input plates around the main field and in the grandstand. A custom patch panel enabled the school to use a Roland video switcher to feed the LED billboard or for external OB companies to patch in their own camera, switching and streaming equipment.
But the most pressing design issue was on the audio side.
AUDIO: GRANDSTAND FINISH
The brief was to implement a proper solution to PA on the Internationals Oval in front of the grandstand as well as providing paging to the several playing fields lying behind the grandstand to the furthest extent of the site.
Q-SYS networked amplifiers had been suggested in previous proposals and the Videopro team were well acquainted with the advantages they provide in dealing with widely dispersed locations. However, the challenging environmental conditions and the long throws required of the speakers suggested a specialist and less familiar solution. Biamp’s range of Community horn speakers were designed for exactly this kind of application.
“I did some research,” Mark noted. “They’re being deployed in a lot of raceway stadiums and a lot of university football grounds, so they seemed like the right speaker for the job. They’re not like traditional horn speakers that can sound very nasal. The Biamp horns have decent-sized drivers. For music, they provide depth and warmth to the sound.”
Indeed, the R2 Series Biamp horns have some recent pedigree having been installed as the PA for the grandstand at Ballymore, the home of A-grade rugby in Queensland. EASE modelling determined that an array of Community R2-52Z, full-range, three-way horn-loaded speakers could cover the Internationals Oval from mounting positions atop the grandstand awning.
“The Biamp team were very supportive in getting this project across the line for us,” Mark Chaplin confirmed, “and they’ve provided great assistance with other projects since then.”
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by strategically placing those speakers, going with a reputable brand, and relying on the engineers to do what they do best, we were actually able to get good, intelligible audio right down the back of the field
PAGING: FIRST PAST THE POST
With one solution in sight, the other part of the requirement, providing paging to the several playing fields behind the Grandstand, initially looked to be problematic. “The intention was to have additional horns from one of the lighting posts on the oval,” Mark revealed. However, an engineering survey of these old steel towers was unable to confirm whether they could support any extra loading.
Videopro’s creative solution was to mount extra speakers from the rear of the Grandstand and from the awning of the boathouse, which was somewhat closer to the target playing fields spread around the banks of the creek. Technically, this was beyond the optimum range of the Community R2-52Z horns but the calculated gamble paid off. At commissioning time, Sean Steadman, St Joseph’s IT Director and project lead walked the site with Mark Chaplin.
“When I came and heard this for the first time,” Sean said, “there was nobody at the grounds and I was blown away just by the clarity of the speakers. We were looking at putting speakers down in the tree line on the far fields to try and project [that far]. But by strategically placing those speakers, going with a reputable brand, and relying on the engineers to do what they do best, we were actually able to get good, intelligible audio right down the back of the field. We’re really happy with the solution.”
TOP MARKS
Mark Chapman, of course, was particularly pleased with the project outcome and proud of his team at Videopro for moving into what is, for them, a more unusual education project. “It’s not a classroom, a lecture theatre or a new building. A stadium is not something we traditionally do so it was a bit different and out of the box.”
St Joseph’s hasn’t proved to be a one-off, however. “We have since been engaged to do a few other sports ovals,” Mark reported. “We’ve done The Southport School with Q-SYS and Biamp, as well as Matthew Flinders College on the Sunshine Coast. So, we’re doing more sporting ovals with horns – not just basic horns but high quality, full-range horn speakers.”
RESPONSES