Melbourne Cricket Ground
Encyclopedia
The Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG) is an Australian sports stadium located in Yarra Park
, Melbourne and is home to the Melbourne Cricket Club
. It is the tenth largest stadium in the world, the largest in Australia, the largest stadium for playing cricket, and holds the world record for the highest light towers at any sporting venue. The MCG is within walking distance of the city centre and is serviced by the Richmond railway station
, Richmond
and the Jolimont railway station, East Melbourne. It is part of the Melbourne Sports and Entertainment Precinct.
Internationally, the MCG is remembered as the centrepiece stadium of both the 1956 Summer Olympics
and the 2006 Commonwealth Games
. The open-air stadium is also one of the world's most famous cricket
venues, with the well-attended Boxing Day
Test match
commencing on Boxing Day
(26 December) each year. Throughout the winter, it serves as the home of Australian rules football
, with at least one game (though usually more) held there each round. The stadium fills to capacity for the AFL Grand Final
in late September, or early October.
The MCG, often referred to by locals as "The G", has also hosted other major events, including International Rules between the Australian Football League
(AFL) and Gaelic Athletic Association
, international Rugby union
, State of Origin
rugby league
, FIFA World Cup qualifiers
and International Friendly matches, serves as the finish line for the Melbourne Marathon and also major rock concerts.
Until the 1970s, more than 120,000 people sometimes crammed into the venue – the record crowd standing at around 130,000 for a Billy Graham evangelistic crusade
in 1959, followed by 121,696 for the 1970 VFL Grand Final
. Grandstand redevelopments and occupational health and safety legislation have now limited the maximum seating capacity to approximately 95,000 with an additional 5000 standing room capacity, bringing the total capacity to just over 100,000.
The MCG is listed on the Victorian Heritage Register
and was included on the Australian National Heritage List
on 26 December 2005. On 30 January 2009, the MCG was named as one of the seven wonders of the sporting world.
It is referred to within Victoria as the "Spiritual Home of Australian Sport".
Founded in November 1838 the Melbourne Cricket Club (MCC) selected the current MCG site in 1853 after previously playing at several grounds around Melbourne. The club’s first game was against a military team at the Old Mint site, at the corner of William
and Latrobe Street
s. Burial Hill
(now Flagstaff railway station) became its home ground in January 1839, however, the area was already set aside for Botanical Gardens and the club was moved on in October 1846, to an area on the south bank of the Yarra about where the Herald and Weekly Times
building is today. Unfortunately the area was subject to flooding forcing the club to move again, this time to a ground in South Melbourne
.
It was not long before the club was forced out again, this time because of the expansion of the railway. The South Melbourne ground was in the path of Victoria’s first steam railway line from Melbourne to Sandridge (now Port Melbourne
). Governor La Trobe
offered the MCC a choice of three sites; an area adjacent to the existing ground, a site at the junction of Flinders
and Spring Streets
or a ten-acre (about 4 hectares) section of the Government Paddock at Richmond next to Richmond Park.
This last option, which is now Yarra Park, had been used by Aborigines until 1835. Between 1835 and 1853 it was an agistment area for colonial troopers’ horses. In 1850 it was part of a 200 acres (80.9 ha) stretch set aside for public recreation extending from Governor La Trobe’s Jolimont Estate to the Yarra River. By 1853 it had become a busy promenade for Melbourne residents.
An MCC sub-committee chose the Richmond Park option because it was level enough for cricket but sloped enough to prevent inundation. That ground was located where the Richmond, or outer, end of the current MCG is now.
At the same time the Richmond Cricket Club
was given occupancy rights to six acres (2.4 hectares) for another cricket ground on the eastern side of the Government Paddock.
At the time of the land grant the Government stipulated that the ground was to be used for cricket and cricket only. This condition remained until 1933 when the State Government allowed the MCG’s uses to be broadened to include other purposes when not being used for cricket.
In 1863 a corridor of land running diagonally across Yarra Park was granted to the Hobson’s Bay Railway and divided Yarra Park from the river. The area closest to the river was also developed for sporting purposes in later years including Olympic venues in 1956.
In 1881 the original members’ stand was sold to the Richmond Cricket Club for £55. A new brick stand, considered at the time to be the world’s finest cricket facility, was built in its place. The foundation stone was laid by Prince George of Wales
and Prince Albert Victor
on 4 July and the stand opened in December that year. It was also in 1881 that a telephone was installed at the ground, and the wickets and goal posts were changed from an east-west orientation to north-south. In 1882 a scoreboard was built which showed details of the batsman's name and how he was dismissed.
When the Lillywhite tour stand burnt down in 1884 it was replaced by a new stand which seated 450 members and 4500 public. In 1897 second storey wings were added to ‘The Grandstand’, as it was known, increasing capacity to 9,000 and in 1900 it was lit with electric light.
More stands were built in the early 20th Century. An open wooden stand was on the south side of the ground in 1904 and the 2084-seat Grey Smith Stand (known as the New Stand until 1912) was erected for members in 1906. The 4000-seat Harrison Stand on the ground’s southern side was built in 1908 followed by the 8000-seat Wardill Stand in 1912. In the 15 years after 1897 the stand capacity at the ground increased to nearly 20,000.
In 1927 the second brick members’ stand was replaced at a cost of £60,000. The Harrison and Wardill Stands were demolished in 1936 to make way for the Southern Stand which was completed in 1937. The Southern Stand seated 18,200 under cover and 13,000 in the open and was the main public area of the MCG. It was where the famous Bay 13
was located, the MCG’s equivalent to The Hill at the Sydney Cricket Ground.
The Northern (Olympic) Stand replaced the old Grandstand for the 1956 Olympic Games and ten years later the Grey Smith Stand and the open concrete stand next to it were replaced by the Western (now Ponsford) Stand.
On 3 March 1967 the Duke of Edinburgh
laid a foundation stone for a new Western Stand, which was completed in 1968 (known as the Ponsford
Stand after 1986).
The MCG was the home of Australia’s first full colour video scoreboard which replaced the old scoreboard in 1982. In 1985 light towers were installed at the ground, allowing for night football and day-night cricket games.
In 1988 inspections of the old Southern Stand found concrete cancer
and provided the opportunity to replace the increasingly run-down 50-year-old facility. The projected cost of $100 million was outside what the Melbourne Cricket Club could afford so the Victorian Football League took the opportunity to part fund the project in return for a 30-year deal to share the ground. The new Great Southern Stand was completed in 1992 at a final cost of $150 million.
The 1928 Members' stand, as well as the 1956 Olympic stand and the 1968 Ponsford stand were demolished one by one between late 2003 to 2005. They were replaced with a new structure in time for Melbourne to host the 2006 Commonwealth Games. Despite now standing as a single unbroken stand, the individual sections retain the names of Ponsford, Olympic and Members Stands. The redevelopment cost exceeded 400 million and pushed the ground's capacity over the 100,000 mark. Since redevelopment, the highest attendance was the 2010 Grand Final
of the AFL with 100,016.
On 3 September 2009, it was announced by the Melbourne Cricket Club
and the Victorian Government that a $30 million refurbishment of the Great Southern Stand would take place. The refurbishment will include renovations to entrance gates which will include more streamlined ticketing areas, food and beverage outlet upgrades including basement level outlets, possible upgrades to seating, public concourses as well as the refurbishment of toilets, function rooms and dining rooms. The upgrade commitment was confirmed on 15 September 2010 with the Melbourne Cricket Club injecting an extra $25 million to bring the upgrade budget to $55 million. Refurbishment will begin during June 2011 and will be completed by March 2013. The upgrade dismisses rumours that for the time being the Great Southern Stand would be demolished and rebuilt in a similar fashion to the combined Ponsford, Members and Olympic stands.
The first inter-colonial cricket match to be played at the MCG was between Victoria and New South Wales in March 1856. Victoria had played Tasmania as early as 1851 but the Victorians had included two professionals in the 1853 team upsetting the Tasmanians and causing a cooling of relations between the two colonies. To replace the disgruntled Tasmanians the Melbourne Cricket Club issued a challenge to play any team in the colonies for £1000. Sydney publican William Tunks accepted the challenge on behalf of New South Wales although the Victorians were criticised for playing for money. Ethics aside, New South Wales could not afford the £1000 and only managed to travel to Melbourne after half the team’s travel cost of £181 was put up by Sydney barrister Richard Driver.
The game eventually got under way on 26 March 1856. The Victorians, stung by criticism over the £1000 stake, argued over just about everything; the toss, who should bat first, whether different pitches should be used for the different innings and even what the umpires should wear.
Victoria won the toss but New South Wales captain George Gilbert successfully argued that the visiting team should decide who bats first. The MCG was a grassless desert and Gilbert, considering players fielded without boots, promptly sent Victoria into bat. Needing only 16 to win in the final innings, New South Wales collapsed to be 5 for 5 before Gilbert’s batting saved the game and the visitors won by three wickets.
In subsequent years conditions at the MCG improved but the ever-ambitious Melburnians were always on the lookout for more than the usual diet of club and inter-colonial games. In 1861, Felix William Spiers
and Christopher Pond, the proprietors of the Cafe de Paris in Bourke Street and caterers to the MCC, sent their agent, W.B. Mallam, to England to arrange for a cricket team to visit Australia.
Mallam found a team and, captained by Heathfield Stephenson, it arrived in Australia on Christmas Eve 1861 to be met by a crowd of more than 3000 people. The team was taken on a parade through the streets wearing white-trimmed hats with blue ribbons given to them for the occasion. Wherever they went they were mobbed and cheered by crowds to the point where the tour sponsors had to take them out of Melbourne so that they could train undisturbed.
Their first game was at the MCG on New Year’s Day 1862, against a Victorian XVIII. The Englishmen also wore coloured sashes around their waists to identify each player and were presented with hats to shade them from the sun. Some estimates put the crowd at the MCG that day at 25,000. It must have been quite a picture with a new 6000 seat grandstand, coloured marquees ringing the ground and a carnival outside. Stephenson said that the ground was better than any in England. The Victorians however, were no match for the English at cricket and the visitors won by an innings and 96 runs.
Over the four days of the ‘test’ more than 45,000 people attended and the profits for Speirs and Pond from this game alone was enough to fund the whole tour. At that time it was the largest number of people to ever watch a cricket match anywhere in the world. Local cricket authorities went out of their way to cater for the needs of the team and the sponsors. They provided grounds and sponsors booths without charge and let the sponsors keep the gate takings. The sponsors however, were not so generous in return. They quibbled with the Melbourne Cricket Club about paying £175 for damages to the MCG despite a prior arrangement to do so.
The last match of the tour was against a Victorian XXII at the MCG after which the English team planted an elm tree outside the ground.
Following the success of this tour, a number of other English teams also visited in subsequent years. George Parr’s side came out in 1863–64 and there were two tours by sides led by W.G. Grace. The fourth tour was led by James Lillywhite.
Up until the fourth tour in 1877, led by Lillywhite
, touring teams had played first-class
games against the individual colonial sides, but Lillywhite felt that his side had done well enough against New South Wales to warrant a game against an All Australian team.
When Lillywhite headed off to New Zealand he left Melbourne cricketer John Conway
to arrange the match for their return. Conway ignored the cricket associations in each colony and selected his own Australian team, negotiating directly with the players. Not only was the team he selected of doubtful representation but it was also probably not the strongest available as some players had declined to take part for various reasons. Demon bowler Fred Spofforth
refused to play because wicket-keeper Billy Murdoch
was not selected. Paceman Frank Allan
was at Warnambool Agricultural Show and Australia’s best all-rounder Edwin Evans
could not get away from work. In the end only five Australian-born players were selected.
The same could be said for Lillywhite’s team which, being selected from only four counties, meant that some of England’s best players did not take part. In addition, the team had a rough voyage back across the Tasman Sea
and many members had been seasick. The game was due to be played on 15 March, the day after their arrival, but most had not yet fully recovered. On top of that, wicket-keeper Ted Pooley
was still in a New Zealand prison after a brawl in a Christchurch
pub.
England were nonetheless favourites to win the game and the first ever Test match began with a crowd of only 1000 watching. The Australians elected Dave Gregory
from New South Wales as Australia’s first ever captain and on winning the toss he decided to bat.
Charles Bannerman
scored an unbeaten 165 before retiring hurt. Sydney Cricket Ground
curator, Ned Gregory
, playing in his one and only Test for Australia, scored Test cricket’s first duck
. Australia racked up 245 and 104 while England scored 196 and 108 giving Australia victory by 45 runs. The win hinged on Bannerman’s century and a superb bowling performance by Tom Kendall
who took of 7 for 55 in England’s second innings.
A fortnight later there was a return game, although it was really more of a benefit for the English team. Australia included Spofforth, Murdoch and T.J.D. Cooper in the side but this time the honours went to England who won by four wickets.
Two years later Lord Harris
brought another England team out and during England’s first innings in the Test at the MCG, Fred Spofforth took the first hat-trick in Test cricket. He bagged two hauls of 6 for 48 and 7 for 62 in Australia’s ten wicket win.
. Some also played in three other matches at the ground before 1869.
By the 1880s the tradition of England-Australia cricket tours was well established, with a total of eight Tests having been played, five of them at the MCG, two at the Sydney Cricket Ground
and one at The Oval
in London. In 1882, England lost to a visiting Australian team in England for the first time. The match was played at The Oval in August on what was said to be a difficult pitch. Australian bowler Fred Spofforth
decimated the English batting after a shocking start by the Australians and the result was a nailbiting finish in which Australia won by seven runs – still one of the closest finishes in Test cricket history. The defeat was widely recorded in the English press and a mock obituary was published in The Sporting Times
, lamenting the death of English cricket and noted that "the body will be cremated and the ashes taken to Australia".
Later that year, the Honourable Ivo Bligh led a team of eight amateurs and four professionals to Australia to recover them, with the first two matches of the tour played at the MCG. The first being a timeless match (as was the custom in those days) that commenced on 30 December. On New Year's Day the attendance was 23,000, and Australia won the match by nine wickets in three days. The second match commenced on 19 January 1883 and was won comfortably by England by an innings and 27 runs.
Two further matches were played by the tourists in Sydney, with the first being won by England and the second by Australia. The second Sydney match was subsequently deemed to not be of Test status, so England had won with the series and had "recovered The Ashes
" as Bligh had set out to do. A group of Melbourne women presented Bligh with a small urn and the Ashes tradition was then firmly established.
Donald Bradman
's record at the MCG is an average of 128 runs in 17 innings. In the 11 Tests that he played there, he made at least one century in nine of them.
Australia’s highest first class score was posted at the MCG when Victoria made 1107 against New South Wales in 1926–27. Jack Ryder scored 295 for the Vics and hit six sixes in the process.
took 7 for 27 in the final innings.
An incident in the second Test of the 1960–61 series involved the West Indies
player Joe Solomon
being given out after his hat fell on the stumps after being bowled at by Richie Benaud
. The crowd sided with the West Indies over the Australians.
Not only was the first Test match played at the MCG, the first One Day International match was also played there, on 5 January 1971, between Australia and England. Australia won the 40-over match by 5 wickets. The next ODI was played on August 1972, some 19 months later.
In March 1977, the Australian Cricket Board assembled 218 of the surviving 224 Australia-England players for a Test match to celebrate 100 years of Test cricket between the two nations. The match was the idea of former Australian bowler and MCC committee member Hans Ebeling who had been responsible for developing the cricket museum at the MCG.
The match had everything. England’s Derek Randall scored 174, Australia’s Rod Marsh also got a century, Lillee took 11 wickets, and David Hookes, in his first test, smacked five fours in a row off England captain Tony Greig’s bowling. Rick McCosker who opened for Australia suffered a fractured jaw after being hit by a sharply rising delivery. He left the field but came back in the second innings with his head swathed in bandages. Incredibly Australia won by 45 runs, exactly the same margin as the first test in 1877.
A less savoury incident occurred in 1981 when Indian batsmen Sunil Gavaskar and Chetan Chauhan walked off the field in a test against Australia. Gavaskar was unhappy with the umpire’s decision to give him out lbw.
A more celebrated unsavoury incident occurred on 1 February 1981 at the end of a one-day match between Australia and New Zealand. New Zealand, batting second, needed six runs off the last ball of the day to tie the game. Australian captain, Greg Chappell instructed his brother Trevor, who was bowling the last over, to send the last ball down underarm
to prevent the New Zealand batsman, Brian McKechnie, from hitting the ball for six. Although not entirely in the spirit of the game, an underarm delivery was quite legal, so long as the arm was kept straight. The Laws of cricket have since been changed to prevent such a thing happening again. The incident has long been a sore point between Australia and New Zealand. Chappell’s decision was taken against the advice of his vice-captain Rod Marsh and other senior players. On the surface it seems baffling. McKechnie was a tailender who had just come to the crease. His chances of hitting his first ball for six on the vast MCG were apparently nil and even if he did manage to get it over the fence New Zealand would not win but only draw the game. However, the series was tied and draw would mean both teams would have to front up again for another match. Chappell wanted the game and the series finished to give his players a rest. He was taking no chances against McKechnie, a dual cricket and rugby international.
In February and March 1985 the Benson & Hedges
World Championship of Cricket
was played at the MCG, a One Day International tournament involving all of the then Test match playing countries to celebrate 150 years of the Australian state of Victoria. Some matches were also played at Sydney Cricket Ground
.
The MCG hosted the historic 1992 Cricket World Cup
final between Pakistan
and England
with a crowd of more than 87,000. Pakistan won the match after sterling all-round performance by Wasim Akram
who scored 33 runs and picked up 3 crucial wickets to make Pakistan cricket world champions for the first and as of yet only time. The match was also Imran Khan
's last match after which he retired.
During the 1995 Boxing Day Test at the MCG, Australian umpire Darrell Hair
called Sri Lankan
spin bowler Muttiah Muralitharan
for throwing the ball, rather than bowling it, seven times during the match. The other umpires did not call him once and this caused a controversy, although he was later called for throwing by other umpires seven other times in different matches.
The MCG is known for its great atmosphere, much of which is generated in the infamous Bay 13. In the late 1980s, the warm up
stretches performed by Merv Hughes
would often be mimicked by the crowd at Bay 13. In a One-Day International cricket match in the late 1990s, the behaviour of Bay 13 was so bad that Shane Warne
had to enter the ground from his dressing rooms and tell the crowd to settle down at the request of opposing England captain Alec Stewart
.
Despite being called the Melbourne Cricket Ground, the stadium has been and continues to be used much more often for Australian rules football
, which reflects that football is Melbourne's most popular sport, winter or otherwise. Indeed, spectator numbers for football are larger than for any other sport in Australia, and it makes more money for the MCG than any of the other sports played there.
Although the Melbourne Cricket Club members were instrumental in founding Australian Rules Football, there were understandable concerns in the early days about the damage that might be done to the playing surface if football was allowed to be played at the MCG – after all it was a cricket ground. therefore, football games were often played in the parklands next to the cricket ground.
This was the case for the first documented football match to be played at the ground. Noted Melbourne cricketer Thomas Wills wrote a letter to the sporting newspaper, Bell's Life in Victoria, on 10 July 1858, suggesting a football club be formed so cricketers could keep fit during the winter months.
Three weeks later Bell's Life in Victoria published another item reporting that James Bryant, publican of the Parade Hotel (now the Melbourne Cricket Ground Hotel) on Wellington Parade close by Richmond Park, had offered to provide a ball for the next football game to be played.
It wasn’t this offer that kicked off football however, as much as headmasters of Australian schools following the trend in British public schools, introducing the idea of muscular Christianity through sport, and football in particular. Two headmasters, Dr John E. Bromby of Melbourne Church of England Grammar and St. Kilda Grammar’s William C. Northcott, arranged a game of football between their schools in 1858. The game was played on the open area just north of the Melbourne Cricket Ground on 31 July, the week of Bryant’s published offer, and was won by St Kilda Grammar.
The next game was organised between Scotch College and Melbourne Grammar a week later. The game began on Saturday, 7 August and bore little resemblance to Australian Football as it is played today. It would have looked more like the folk football matches played between towns in England to which it owed its heritage. There were no written rules and no umpires. The field was a paddock with no boundaries and trees for goal posts. About 40 players on each side kicked a round leather ball inflated by a pigs bladder. The game commenced about midday, probably with a place kick, and the rules at that time said that the winner was the first team to score two goals. By 5 pm it was getting dark and as both teams had scored only one goal they all had to come back two weeks later on 21 August for the next instalment. Again neither scored and a fortnight later on 4 September both teams returned to continue playing. Again there was no score. The match was declared a draw and that was the end of the first football season. A plaque in Yarra Park, outside the current MCG, incorrectly commemorates this match between Scotch College and Melbourne Grammar as the first. That these first two games could be so quickly organised after Wills’s letter strongly indicates that they probably were not the first football games at all.
It wasn’t until 1869 that football was played on the MCG proper, even though it was only a trial game involving a police team. It was not for another ten years, in 1879, after the formation of the Victorian Football Association, that the first official match was played on the MCG and the cricket ground itself became a regular venue for football. Night matches were even played that year using specially erected light towers.
In those early years the MCG was the home ground of Melbourne Football Club
, Australia’s oldest, established in 1859 by the founder of the game itself, Thomas Wills. A founding member of the Victorian Football Association in 1877, Melbourne won five premierships in the early years using the MCG as its home ground. Melbourne originally played in white and were known as the ‘Invincible Whites’ but became the ‘Redlegs’ in 1872 and eventually the ‘Demons’ after World War II.
The first of nearly 2500 Victorian Football League/Australian Football League
games to be played at the MCG was on 15 May 1897, with beating 64 to 19.
Several Australian Football League (AFL) clubs use the MCG as their home ground; currently , , and . In 1965 Richmond played in its first home match at the MCG. In 1985 played its first home game against Collingwood at the MCG. Collingwood played its first home match at the MCG in 1994. Hawthorn played its first home match at the MCG in 2000.
because construction of the Great Southern Stand at the MCG had temporarily reduced the ground’s capacity.
The first tied grand final to be played at the MCG was in 1948 when Essendon and Melbourne finished 69-all at the end of time. Essendon had dominated the season and finished well ahead of second placed Melbourne. They also beat Melbourne in the semi-final and were expected to win the grand final. However, Essendon scored an incredible 27 behinds and only seven goals to Melbourne’s 10 goals 9 behinds. To make things worse for Essendon, Melbourne thrashed Essendon by 39 points in the grand final replay the next week.
In 1966
one of the closest grand final results was between St Kilda and Collingwood. St Kilda was playing in only its third grand final since the founding of the club in 1873. They had been well beaten in the grand final the previous year but this year scores were much closer. In fact the scores were level at the end of regulation time when 17-year old Barry Breen mis-kicked towards goal and the ball scraped in for one point, enough to give St Kilda its first flag.
In 1970 the Grand Final between Carlton and Collingwood was watched by 121,696 people, the biggest sporting crowd ever to squeeze into the MCG. Collingwood had skipped out to a 44 point lead by half time and it looked like Carlton was gone, but in the half-time break master coach Ron Barassi told his Carlton players to ‘Handball! Handball! Handball!’ Up until then Australian Rules had been very much a stop-start game with players kicking forward to team mates who took a mark, stopped and kicked again. While handball was purely used as a defensive option. The 1970 grand final changed all that. In the second half Carlton, instead of kicking and marking, ran and handballed to each other moving the ball quickly away from the Collingwood defenders. Carlton’s tactics saw them catch and beat Collingwood and change forever the way the game is played.
The 1977 season saw one of the most remarkable changes in form in the history of the game. Collingwood finished last in the 1976 competition but under new coach Tom Hafey found themselves in the 1977 VFL Grand Final
. It was the first grand final to be televised live in Victoria and viewers tuned in to find Collingwood led by 27 points at three-quarter time. But North came back in the final period to kick five unanswered goals and overhaul the Magpies. Collingwood did managed to score one goal in the final quarter, Ross ‘Twiggy’ Dunne kicked it in the final minute to level the scores. The replay was North’s fifth consecutive finals match that year and they won it to take their second premiership.
. Both needed the other, but resented the dependence. The VFL made the first move which brought things to a head by beginning the development of VFL Park at Mulgrave
in the 1960s as its own home ground and as a potential venue for future grand finals. Then in 1983, president of the VFL, Alan Aylett started to pressure the MCG Trust to give the VFL a greater share of the money it made from using the ground for football.
In March 1983 the MCG trustees met to consider a submission from Aylett. Aylett said he wanted the Melbourne Cricket Club’s share of revenue cut from 15 per cent to 10 per cent. He threatened to take the following day’s opening game of the season, Collingwood vs Melbourne, away from the MCG. The trustees knew he couldn’t do it, but they agreed to a compromise. The money was held aside until an agreement could be reached.
Different deals, half deals and possible deals were done over the years, with the Premier of Victoria, John Cain
, even becoming involved. Cain was said to have promised the VFL it could use the MCG for six months of the year and then hand it back to the MCC, but this never eventuated, as the MCG Trust did not approve it. In the mid 1980s a deal was done where the VFL was given its own members area in the Northern Stand (which is always conspicuously empty, except on Grand Final day).
Against this background of political manoeuvring, in 1985 became the third club to make the MCG its home ground. In the same year, North played in the first night football match at the MCG for almost 110 years, against Collingwood on 29 March 1985.
In 1986, only a month after Ross Oakley
had taken over as VFL Commissioner, VFL executives met with the MCC and took a big step towards resolving their differences. Changes in the personnel at the MCC also helped. In 1983 John Lill
was appointed secretary and Don Cordner
its president.
Shortly after the Southern Stand opened in 1992, the Australian Football League moved its headquarters into the complex. The AFL assisted with financing the new stand and came to an agreement that ensures at least 45 AFL games are played at the MCG each year, including the grand final in September. Another 45 days of cricket are also played there each year and more than 3.5 million spectators come to watch every year.
In the current era most finals games held in Melbourne have been played at the MCG due to contracts between the AFL and MCC. Some contracts which had not been properly updated in the now national competition came to a head in 2004 when the were forced to play a "home" final against (who occasionally use the MCG as a home ground) at the MCG, due to a contract which stipulated that at least five finals matches must be played there per year and that at least one final must be played at the MCG each week of the finals. This marked the first time in the AFL where two non-Victorian clubs had earned the right to host all home games in a certain week of the finals. The contract has been renegotiated to allow interstate sides to have true home matches. However, Melbourne clubs based out of Etihad Stadium (which will eventually be owned by the Australian Football League) – as well as Geelong – are still required to play their home finals at the MCG. The AFL Grand Final is always played at the MCG, regardless of which teams may be playing.
Matthew Richardson
holds the records for having scored the most goals on the MCG, and Kevin Bartlett holds the record for playing the most matches at the MCG. Two players have scored 14 goals for an AFL or VFL game in one match at the MCG: Gary Ablett in 1989 and 1993, and John Longmire
in 1990.
A State of Origin
football match was held on 1 July 1989 between Victoria and South Australia, attended by 91,960 people.
Before an AFL match between and on 27 August 1999, the city end scoreboard caught on fire due to an electrical fault, causing the start of play to be delayed by half an hour.
The 2008 AFL Grand Final
, played between and attracted a crowd of 100,012 to the venue for the first Grand Final between two Victorian AFL Teams since defeated in the 2000 AFL Grand Final
. This figure was bettered by just four people two years later, when 100,016 saw and fight out the first Grand Final draw
in 33 years.
recognised the potential embarrassment to Australia if this happened and organised a three-day summit meeting to thrash things out. Attending was Victorian Premier John Cain
, the Prime Minister, deputy opposition leader Arthur Calwell
, all State political leaders, civic leaders, Olympic officials and trustees and officials of the MCC. Convening the meeting was no small effort considering the calibre of those attending and that many of the sports officials were only part-time amateurs.
As 22 November, the date of the opening ceremony, drew closer, Melbourne was gripped ever more tightly by Olympic fever. At 3 pm the day before the opening ceremony, people began to line up outside the MCG gates. That night the city was paralysed by a quarter of a million people who had come to celebrate.
The MCG's capacity was increased by the new Olympic (or Northern) Stand, and on the day itself 103,000 people filled the stadium to capacity. A young up and coming distance runner was chosen to carry the Olympic torch into the stadium for the opening ceremony.
Although Ron Clarke
had a number of junior world records for distances of 1500 m, one mile (1.6 km) and two miles (3 km), he was relatively unknown in 1956. Perhaps the opportunity to carry the torch inspired him because he went on to have a career of exceptional brilliance and was without doubt the most outstanding runner of his day. At one stage he held the world record for every distance from two miles (3 km) to 20 km. His few failures came in Olympic and Commonwealth Games competition. Although favourite for the gold at Rome in 1960 he was placed ninth in the 5 km and the marathon and third in the 10 km. He lost again in the 1966 Commonwealth Games and in 1968 at altitude in Mexico he collapsed at the end of the 10 km race.
On that famous day in Melbourne in 1956 the torch spluttered and sparked, showering Clarke with hot magnesium, burning holes in his shirt. When he dipped the torch into the cauldron it burst into flame singeing him further. In the centre of the ground, John Landy, the fastest miler in the world, took the Olympic oath and sculler Merv Wood carried the Australian flag.
The Melbourne Games also saw the high point of Australian female sprinting with Betty Cuthbert
winning three gold medals at the MCG. She won the 100 m and 200 m and anchored the winning 4 x 100 m team. Born in Merrylands in Sydney’s west she was a champion schoolgirl athlete and had already broken the world record for the 200 m just before the 1956 Games. She tended to be overshadowed somewhat by her Western Suburbs club mate, the better-known Marlene Matthews
. When they got to the Games, Matthews was the overwhelming favourite especially for the 100 m a distance over which Cuthbert had beaten her just once.
Both Matthews and Cuthbert won their heats with Matthews setting an Olympic record of 11.5 seconds in hers. Cuthbert broke that record in the following heat with a time of 11.4 seconds. The world record of 11.3 was held by another Australian, Shirley Strickland who was eliminated in her heat. In the final Matthews felt she got a bad start and was last at the 50 metre mark. Cuthbert sensed Isabella Daniels from the USA close behind her and pulled out a little extra to win Australia’s first gold at the Games in a time of 11.5 seconds, Matthews was third. The result was repeated in the 200 m final. Cuthbert won her second gold breaking Marjorie Jackson’s Olympic record. Mathews was third again.
By the time the 1956 Olympics came around, Shirley Strickland
was a mother of 31 years of age but managed to defend her 80 m title, which she had won in Helsinki four years before, winning gold and setting a new Olympic record.
The sensational incident of the track events was the non-selection of Marlene Matthews in the 4 x 100 m relay. Matthews trained with the relay team up until the selection was made but Cuthbert, Strickland, Fleur Mellor and Norma Croker were picked for the team. There was outrage at the selection which increased when Matthews went on to run third in both the 100 m and 200 m finals. Personally she was devastated and felt that the she had been overlooked for her poor baton change. Strickland was disappointed with the way Matthews was treated and maintained it was an opinion held in New South Wales that she had baton problems. One of the selectors, Doris Magee from NSW, said that selecting Matthews increased the risk of disqualification at the change. But Cuthbert maintained that the selectors made the right choice saying that Fleur Mellor was fresh, a specialist relay runner and was better around the curves than Matthews.
The men did not fare so well. The 4 x 400 m relay team, including later IOC Committee member Kevan Gosper, won silver. Charles Porter also won silver in the high jump. Hec Hogan won bronze in the 100 m to become the first Australian man to win a medal in a sprint since the turn of the century and despite injury John Landy won bronze in the 1500 m. Allan Lawrence won bronze in the 10,000 m event.
Apart from athletics, the stadium was also used for the soccer finals, the hockey finals, the Opening and Closing Ceremonies, and an exhibition game of baseball between the Australian National Team and a US armed services team at which an estimated crowd of 114,000 attended. This was the Guiness World Record for the largest attendance for any baseball game, which stood until a 29 March 2008 exhibition game between the Boston Red Sox
and Los Angeles Dodgers
at the Los Angeles Coliseum (also a former Olympic venue) drawing 115,300.
The MCG was also used for another demonstration sport, Australian Rules. The Olympics being an amateur competition meant that only amateurs could play in the demonstration game. A combined team of amateurs from the VFL and VFA were selected to play a state team from the Victorian Amateur Football Association (VAFA). The game was played 7 December 1956 with the VAFA side, wearing white jumpers, green collars and the Olympic rings on their chests, winning easily 81 to 55.
The MCG’s link with its Olympic past continues to this day. Within its walls is the IOC-endorsed Australian Gallery of Sport and Olympic Museum.
Forty-four years later at the 2000 Summer Olympics
in Sydney, the Grounds served as host to several football
preliminaries, making it one of a few venues ever used for more than one Olympics.
was first played at the ground on 15 August 1914, with a New South Wales
team losing to England 15–21.
The first ever rugby league
State of Origin
match at the MCG (and second in Melbourne) was played on 8 June 1994, attracting a then record league crowd in Australia of 87,161. Games were also played there in 1995 and 1997.
The Melbourne Storm
played two marquee games at the MCG in 2000. This was the first time that they had played outside of their normal home ground of Olympic Park Stadium
which holds 18,500 people.
Their first game was held on 3 March 2000 against the St. George Illawarra Dragons in a rematch of the infamous 1999 Grand Final. Anthony Mundine
said they were 'not worthy premiers' and the Storm responded by running in 12 tries to two and winning 70–10 in front of 23,239 fans. This was their biggest crowd they had played against until 33,427 turned up to the 2007 Preliminary Final at Docklands Stadium. The record home and away crowd record has also been overhauled, when a match at Docklands in 2010 against St George attracted 25,480 spectators.
Their second game attracted only 15,535 spectators and was up against the Cronulla Sharks
on 24 June 2000. Once again, the Storm won 22–16.
Since then, there has been recent talk of Rugby League's State of Origin Series returning to the venue after the stadium put in a bid to host games in 2008.
and Football Federation Australia
chairman Frank Lowy
announced that the MCG would host a world class soccer event each year from 2006 until 2009 inclusive. The announcement came as the game gained further popularity in the country following the qualification for the 2006 FIFA World Cup
in Germany.
The agreement sees an annual fixture at the MCG, beginning with a clash between Australia and European champions
Greece
on 25 May 2006 in front of a sell-out crowd of 95,103, before Australia left to contest in the World Cup finals. Australia beat Greece 1–0. The Socceroos also hosted a match in 2007 against Argentina, losing 1–0, as well as 2010 FIFA World Cup qualification
matches in 2009 against Asian Football heavyweights (Japan) which attracted 81,872 fans as Australia beat Japan 2–1 via 2 Tim Cahill trademark headers after falling behind 1–0 late in the 1st half.
In 2010 it was announced that as a warm up to the 2010 FIFA World Cup
which the Australians had qualified for, they would play fellow qualified nation New Zealand
on 24 May at the MCG.
Other matches played at the MCG include the following:
In 1889 the MCC arranged for tennis to be played at the then Warehousemen’s Cricket Ground, now the Albert Ground, at Albert Park, rather than the MCG.
was held at the MCG attracting a crowd of 30,000 to see cyclists race for a total of £200 in prize money.
Outside of the MCG are statues of famous Australian athletes donated by Tattersalls
and known as the Parade of Champions, including many Australian rules football and cricket legends.
They include:
There is also a statue depicting the first game of Australian rules football and the nearby Punt Road Oval
has a statue of Jack Dyer
.
Yarra Park, Melbourne
Yarra Park is part of the Melbourne Sports and Entertainment Precinct - the premier sporting precinct of Victoria, Australia. Located in Yarra Park is the Melbourne Cricket Ground and numerous sporting fields and ovals, including the associated sporting complexes of Melbourne & Olympic Parks...
, Melbourne and is home to the Melbourne Cricket Club
Melbourne Cricket Club
The Melbourne Cricket Club is a sporting club based in Melbourne, Australia. It was founded in 1838 and is regarded as the oldest sporting club in Australia....
. It is the tenth largest stadium in the world, the largest in Australia, the largest stadium for playing cricket, and holds the world record for the highest light towers at any sporting venue. The MCG is within walking distance of the city centre and is serviced by the Richmond railway station
Richmond railway station, Melbourne
Richmond is a railway station in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, located in the suburb of Richmond. It is classed as a Premium Station and is in Metcard Zone 1.-Facilities:...
, Richmond
Richmond, Victoria
Richmond is a suburb in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 3 km south-east from Melbourne's central business district. Its Local Government Area is the City of Yarra...
and the Jolimont railway station, East Melbourne. It is part of the Melbourne Sports and Entertainment Precinct.
Internationally, the MCG is remembered as the centrepiece stadium of both the 1956 Summer Olympics
1956 Summer Olympics
The 1956 Melbourne Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the XVI Olympiad, were an international multi-sport event which was held in Melbourne, Australia, in 1956, with the exception of the equestrian events, which could not be held in Australia due to quarantine regulations...
and the 2006 Commonwealth Games
2006 Commonwealth Games
The 2006 Commonwealth Games were held in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia between 15 March and 26 March 2006. It was the largest sporting event to be staged in Melbourne, eclipsing the 1956 Summer Olympics in terms of the number of teams competing, athletes competing, and events being held.The site...
. The open-air stadium is also one of the world's most famous cricket
Cricket
Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of 11 players on an oval-shaped field, at the centre of which is a rectangular 22-yard long pitch. One team bats, trying to score as many runs as possible while the other team bowls and fields, trying to dismiss the batsmen and thus limit the...
venues, with the well-attended Boxing Day
Boxing Day Test
The Boxing Day Test match is a cricket Test match hosted in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia involving the Australian cricket team and an opposing national team which is touring Australia that summer. It begins annually on Boxing Day and is played at the Melbourne Cricket Ground...
Test match
Test cricket
Test cricket is the longest form of the sport of cricket. Test matches are played between national representative teams with "Test status", as determined by the International Cricket Council , with four innings played between two teams of 11 players over a period of up to a maximum five days...
commencing on Boxing Day
Boxing Day
Boxing Day is a bank or public holiday that occurs on 26 December, or the first or second weekday after Christmas Day, depending on national or regional laws. It is observed in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and some other Commonwealth nations. In Ireland, it is recognized as...
(26 December) each year. Throughout the winter, it serves as the home of Australian rules football
Australian rules football
Australian rules football, officially known as Australian football, also called football, Aussie rules or footy is a sport played between two teams of 22 players on either...
, with at least one game (though usually more) held there each round. The stadium fills to capacity for the AFL Grand Final
AFL Grand Final
The AFL Grand Final is an annual Australian rules football match, traditionally held on the final Saturday in September at the Melbourne Cricket Ground in Melbourne, Australia to determine the Australian Football League premiership champions for that year...
in late September, or early October.
The MCG, often referred to by locals as "The G", has also hosted other major events, including International Rules between the Australian Football League
Australian Football League
The Australian Football League is both the governing body and the major professional competition in the sport of Australian rules football...
(AFL) and Gaelic Athletic Association
Gaelic Athletic Association
The Gaelic Athletic Association is an amateur Irish and international cultural and sporting organisation focused primarily on promoting Gaelic games, which include the traditional Irish sports of hurling, camogie, Gaelic football, handball and rounders...
, international Rugby union
Rugby union
Rugby union, often simply referred to as rugby, is a full contact team sport which originated in England in the early 19th century. One of the two codes of rugby football, it is based on running with the ball in hand...
, State of Origin
Rugby League State of Origin
State of Origin is an annual best of three series of rugby league football matches contested by the Maroons and the Blues, who represent the Australian states of Queensland and New South Wales respectively...
rugby league
Rugby league
Rugby league football, usually called rugby league, is a full contact sport played by two teams of thirteen players on a rectangular grass field. One of the two codes of rugby football, it originated in England in 1895 by a split from Rugby Football Union over paying players...
, FIFA World Cup qualifiers
FIFA World Cup qualification
The FIFA World Cup qualification is the process that a national association football team goes through to qualify for the FIFA World Cup Finals. The FIFA World Cup is a global event, so qualification is required to reduce the large field of participants from about 200 to 32.Qualifying tournaments...
and International Friendly matches, serves as the finish line for the Melbourne Marathon and also major rock concerts.
Until the 1970s, more than 120,000 people sometimes crammed into the venue – the record crowd standing at around 130,000 for a Billy Graham evangelistic crusade
Revival meeting
A revival meeting is a series of Christian religious services held in order to inspire active members of a church body, to raise funds and to gain new converts...
in 1959, followed by 121,696 for the 1970 VFL Grand Final
1970 VFL Grand Final
The 1970 VFL Grand Final was an Australian rules football game contested between the Carlton Football Club and Collingwood Football Club, held at the Melbourne Cricket Ground in Melbourne on 26 September 1970. It was the 74th annual Grand Final of the Victorian Football League, staged to determine...
. Grandstand redevelopments and occupational health and safety legislation have now limited the maximum seating capacity to approximately 95,000 with an additional 5000 standing room capacity, bringing the total capacity to just over 100,000.
The MCG is listed on the Victorian Heritage Register
Victorian Heritage Register
The Victorian Heritage Register lists places of cultural heritage significance to the State of Victoria, Australia. It has statutory weight under the Heritage Act 1995 which establishes Heritage Victoria as the permit authority...
and was included on the Australian National Heritage List
Australian National Heritage List
The Australian National Heritage List is a list of places deemed to be of outstanding heritage significance to Australia. The list includes natural, historic and indigenous places...
on 26 December 2005. On 30 January 2009, the MCG was named as one of the seven wonders of the sporting world.
It is referred to within Victoria as the "Spiritual Home of Australian Sport".
Early history
William Street, Melbourne
William Street is a major street in the central business district of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. It runs roughly north-south from Flinders Street to Victoria Street, and is located in the western half of the Hoddle Grid....
and Latrobe Street
La Trobe Street, Melbourne
La Trobe Street is a major street in the central business district of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. It runs roughly from east to west and forms the northern boundary of the CBD ....
s. Burial Hill
Burial Hill
Burial Hill is a hill containing a historic cemetery in Plymouth, Massachusetts. The burial ground is the burial site of several Pilgrims. The cemetery was founded in the 17th century and is located off Leyden Street, the first street in Plymouth.-History:The first Pilgrim burial ground was on...
(now Flagstaff railway station) became its home ground in January 1839, however, the area was already set aside for Botanical Gardens and the club was moved on in October 1846, to an area on the south bank of the Yarra about where the Herald and Weekly Times
The Herald and Weekly Times Ltd
The Herald and Weekly Times Limited is a newspaper publishing company based in Melbourne, Australia. It is owned and operated by Rupert Murdoch's News Limited, who purchased HWT in 1987.-Newspapers:...
building is today. Unfortunately the area was subject to flooding forcing the club to move again, this time to a ground in South Melbourne
South Melbourne, Victoria
South Melbourne is an inner city suburb in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 2 km south from Melbourne's central business district. Its Local Government Area are the Cities of Port Phillip and Melbourne...
.
It was not long before the club was forced out again, this time because of the expansion of the railway. The South Melbourne ground was in the path of Victoria’s first steam railway line from Melbourne to Sandridge (now Port Melbourne
Port Melbourne, Victoria
Port Melbourne is a suburb of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 5 km southwest of Melbourne's central business district. Its Local Government areas are the cities of Port Phillip and Melbourne. At the 2006 Census, Port Melbourne had a population of 13,293....
). Governor La Trobe
Charles La Trobe
Charles Joseph La Trobe was the first lieutenant-governor of the colony of Victoria .-Early life:La Trobe was born in London, the son of Christian Ignatius Latrobe, a family of Huguenot origin...
offered the MCC a choice of three sites; an area adjacent to the existing ground, a site at the junction of Flinders
Flinders Street, Melbourne
Flinders Street is a notable street in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Running roughly parallel to the Yarra River, Flinders Street forms the southern edge of the Hoddle Grid. It is exactly one mile in length and one and half chains in width...
and Spring Streets
Spring Street, Melbourne
Spring Street is a major street in the central business district of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. It runs roughly north-south, and is the easternmost street in the Hoddle Grid. The street travels from Flinders Street in the south, to La Trobe Street and the Carlton Gardens in the north...
or a ten-acre (about 4 hectares) section of the Government Paddock at Richmond next to Richmond Park.
This last option, which is now Yarra Park, had been used by Aborigines until 1835. Between 1835 and 1853 it was an agistment area for colonial troopers’ horses. In 1850 it was part of a 200 acres (80.9 ha) stretch set aside for public recreation extending from Governor La Trobe’s Jolimont Estate to the Yarra River. By 1853 it had become a busy promenade for Melbourne residents.
An MCC sub-committee chose the Richmond Park option because it was level enough for cricket but sloped enough to prevent inundation. That ground was located where the Richmond, or outer, end of the current MCG is now.
At the same time the Richmond Cricket Club
Richmond Cricket Club
This article concerns the Richmond club in Australia. For the English club of the same name, see Richmond Cricket Club, SurreyThe Richmond Cricket Club is an Australian cricket club based in Richmond, an inner suburb of Melbourne, Victoria....
was given occupancy rights to six acres (2.4 hectares) for another cricket ground on the eastern side of the Government Paddock.
At the time of the land grant the Government stipulated that the ground was to be used for cricket and cricket only. This condition remained until 1933 when the State Government allowed the MCG’s uses to be broadened to include other purposes when not being used for cricket.
In 1863 a corridor of land running diagonally across Yarra Park was granted to the Hobson’s Bay Railway and divided Yarra Park from the river. The area closest to the river was also developed for sporting purposes in later years including Olympic venues in 1956.
Stadium development
The first grandstand at the MCG was the original wooden members’ stand built in 1854, while the first public grandstand was a 200-metre long 6000-seat temporary structure built in 1861. Another grandstand seating 2000 and facing one way to the cricket ground and the other way to the park where football was played, was built in 1876 for the 1877 visit of James Lillywhite’s English cricket team. It was during this tour that the first Test Match was played.George V of the United Kingdom
George V was King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions, and Emperor of India, from 6 May 1910 through the First World War until his death in 1936....
and Prince Albert Victor
Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence
Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence and Avondale was a member of the British Royal Family. He was the eldest son of Albert Edward, Prince of Wales and Alexandra, Princess of Wales , and the grandson of the reigning monarch, Queen Victoria...
on 4 July and the stand opened in December that year. It was also in 1881 that a telephone was installed at the ground, and the wickets and goal posts were changed from an east-west orientation to north-south. In 1882 a scoreboard was built which showed details of the batsman's name and how he was dismissed.
When the Lillywhite tour stand burnt down in 1884 it was replaced by a new stand which seated 450 members and 4500 public. In 1897 second storey wings were added to ‘The Grandstand’, as it was known, increasing capacity to 9,000 and in 1900 it was lit with electric light.
More stands were built in the early 20th Century. An open wooden stand was on the south side of the ground in 1904 and the 2084-seat Grey Smith Stand (known as the New Stand until 1912) was erected for members in 1906. The 4000-seat Harrison Stand on the ground’s southern side was built in 1908 followed by the 8000-seat Wardill Stand in 1912. In the 15 years after 1897 the stand capacity at the ground increased to nearly 20,000.
In 1927 the second brick members’ stand was replaced at a cost of £60,000. The Harrison and Wardill Stands were demolished in 1936 to make way for the Southern Stand which was completed in 1937. The Southern Stand seated 18,200 under cover and 13,000 in the open and was the main public area of the MCG. It was where the famous Bay 13
Bay 13
Bay 13 is a section of tiered seating at the Melbourne Cricket Ground that occupies part of the Great Southern Stand behind the slips for a right-handed batsman, usually where third man is fielding...
was located, the MCG’s equivalent to The Hill at the Sydney Cricket Ground.
The Northern (Olympic) Stand replaced the old Grandstand for the 1956 Olympic Games and ten years later the Grey Smith Stand and the open concrete stand next to it were replaced by the Western (now Ponsford) Stand.
On 3 March 1967 the Duke of Edinburgh
Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh
Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh is the husband of Elizabeth II. He is the United Kingdom's longest-serving consort and the oldest serving spouse of a reigning British monarch....
laid a foundation stone for a new Western Stand, which was completed in 1968 (known as the Ponsford
Bill Ponsford
William Harold "Bill" Ponsford MBE was an Australian cricketer. Usually playing as an opening batsman, he formed a successful and long-lived partnership opening the batting for Victoria and Australia with Bill Woodfull, his friend and state and national captain...
Stand after 1986).
The MCG was the home of Australia’s first full colour video scoreboard which replaced the old scoreboard in 1982. In 1985 light towers were installed at the ground, allowing for night football and day-night cricket games.
In 1988 inspections of the old Southern Stand found concrete cancer
Concrete cancer
Concrete cancer is a colloquial name for the deterioration of concrete caused by the presence of contaminants or the action of weather combined with atmospheric properties. While often used in the context of the rusting of concrete reinforcement bar , the term can equally be applied to any number...
and provided the opportunity to replace the increasingly run-down 50-year-old facility. The projected cost of $100 million was outside what the Melbourne Cricket Club could afford so the Victorian Football League took the opportunity to part fund the project in return for a 30-year deal to share the ground. The new Great Southern Stand was completed in 1992 at a final cost of $150 million.
The 1928 Members' stand, as well as the 1956 Olympic stand and the 1968 Ponsford stand were demolished one by one between late 2003 to 2005. They were replaced with a new structure in time for Melbourne to host the 2006 Commonwealth Games. Despite now standing as a single unbroken stand, the individual sections retain the names of Ponsford, Olympic and Members Stands. The redevelopment cost exceeded 400 million and pushed the ground's capacity over the 100,000 mark. Since redevelopment, the highest attendance was the 2010 Grand Final
2010 AFL Grand Final
The 2010 AFL Grand Final is either of two Australian rules football contests between the Collingwood Football Club and the St Kilda Football Club. Together they are considered the 114th annual Grand Final of the Victorian Football League/Australian Football League, and were staged to determine the...
of the AFL with 100,016.
On 3 September 2009, it was announced by the Melbourne Cricket Club
Melbourne Cricket Club
The Melbourne Cricket Club is a sporting club based in Melbourne, Australia. It was founded in 1838 and is regarded as the oldest sporting club in Australia....
and the Victorian Government that a $30 million refurbishment of the Great Southern Stand would take place. The refurbishment will include renovations to entrance gates which will include more streamlined ticketing areas, food and beverage outlet upgrades including basement level outlets, possible upgrades to seating, public concourses as well as the refurbishment of toilets, function rooms and dining rooms. The upgrade commitment was confirmed on 15 September 2010 with the Melbourne Cricket Club injecting an extra $25 million to bring the upgrade budget to $55 million. Refurbishment will begin during June 2011 and will be completed by March 2013. The upgrade dismisses rumours that for the time being the Great Southern Stand would be demolished and rebuilt in a similar fashion to the combined Ponsford, Members and Olympic stands.
Early years
The first cricket match was played on 30 September 1854.The first inter-colonial cricket match to be played at the MCG was between Victoria and New South Wales in March 1856. Victoria had played Tasmania as early as 1851 but the Victorians had included two professionals in the 1853 team upsetting the Tasmanians and causing a cooling of relations between the two colonies. To replace the disgruntled Tasmanians the Melbourne Cricket Club issued a challenge to play any team in the colonies for £1000. Sydney publican William Tunks accepted the challenge on behalf of New South Wales although the Victorians were criticised for playing for money. Ethics aside, New South Wales could not afford the £1000 and only managed to travel to Melbourne after half the team’s travel cost of £181 was put up by Sydney barrister Richard Driver.
The game eventually got under way on 26 March 1856. The Victorians, stung by criticism over the £1000 stake, argued over just about everything; the toss, who should bat first, whether different pitches should be used for the different innings and even what the umpires should wear.
Victoria won the toss but New South Wales captain George Gilbert successfully argued that the visiting team should decide who bats first. The MCG was a grassless desert and Gilbert, considering players fielded without boots, promptly sent Victoria into bat. Needing only 16 to win in the final innings, New South Wales collapsed to be 5 for 5 before Gilbert’s batting saved the game and the visitors won by three wickets.
In subsequent years conditions at the MCG improved but the ever-ambitious Melburnians were always on the lookout for more than the usual diet of club and inter-colonial games. In 1861, Felix William Spiers
Felix William Spiers
Felix William Spiers was a British restaurateur and hotelier.Spiers' family originated in Glasgow, Scotland in the very early 18th century. One of the family moved to France, where he dealt in tobacco. Later family members were born in Calais, Dunkerque, Boulogne, France and in England...
and Christopher Pond, the proprietors of the Cafe de Paris in Bourke Street and caterers to the MCC, sent their agent, W.B. Mallam, to England to arrange for a cricket team to visit Australia.
Mallam found a team and, captained by Heathfield Stephenson, it arrived in Australia on Christmas Eve 1861 to be met by a crowd of more than 3000 people. The team was taken on a parade through the streets wearing white-trimmed hats with blue ribbons given to them for the occasion. Wherever they went they were mobbed and cheered by crowds to the point where the tour sponsors had to take them out of Melbourne so that they could train undisturbed.
Their first game was at the MCG on New Year’s Day 1862, against a Victorian XVIII. The Englishmen also wore coloured sashes around their waists to identify each player and were presented with hats to shade them from the sun. Some estimates put the crowd at the MCG that day at 25,000. It must have been quite a picture with a new 6000 seat grandstand, coloured marquees ringing the ground and a carnival outside. Stephenson said that the ground was better than any in England. The Victorians however, were no match for the English at cricket and the visitors won by an innings and 96 runs.
Over the four days of the ‘test’ more than 45,000 people attended and the profits for Speirs and Pond from this game alone was enough to fund the whole tour. At that time it was the largest number of people to ever watch a cricket match anywhere in the world. Local cricket authorities went out of their way to cater for the needs of the team and the sponsors. They provided grounds and sponsors booths without charge and let the sponsors keep the gate takings. The sponsors however, were not so generous in return. They quibbled with the Melbourne Cricket Club about paying £175 for damages to the MCG despite a prior arrangement to do so.
The last match of the tour was against a Victorian XXII at the MCG after which the English team planted an elm tree outside the ground.
Following the success of this tour, a number of other English teams also visited in subsequent years. George Parr’s side came out in 1863–64 and there were two tours by sides led by W.G. Grace. The fourth tour was led by James Lillywhite.
First test match
James Lillywhite
James Lillywhite was a first-class and Test cricketer and umpire. He was the first ever captain of the English cricket team in a Test match, captaining 2 Tests against Australia in 1876-77, losing the first, but winning the second.Lillywhite was born in Westhampnett in Sussex, the son of a...
, touring teams had played first-class
First-class cricket
First-class cricket is a class of cricket that consists of matches of three or more days' scheduled duration, that are between two sides of eleven players and are officially adjudged first-class by virtue of the standard of the competing teams...
games against the individual colonial sides, but Lillywhite felt that his side had done well enough against New South Wales to warrant a game against an All Australian team.
When Lillywhite headed off to New Zealand he left Melbourne cricketer John Conway
John Conway (cricketer)
John Conway was an Australian professional cricketer and team manager who played first-class cricket from 1861–62 to 1879–80....
to arrange the match for their return. Conway ignored the cricket associations in each colony and selected his own Australian team, negotiating directly with the players. Not only was the team he selected of doubtful representation but it was also probably not the strongest available as some players had declined to take part for various reasons. Demon bowler Fred Spofforth
Fred Spofforth
Frederick Robert "Fred" Spofforth , also known as "The Demon Bowler", was arguably the Australian cricket team's finest pace bowler of the nineteenth century and was the first bowler to take 50 Test wickets, and the first to take a test hat-trick in 1879...
refused to play because wicket-keeper Billy Murdoch
Billy Murdoch
William Lloyd Murdoch was an Australian cricketer, who captained the Australian team on tours to England in 1880, 1882 , 1884 and 1890...
was not selected. Paceman Frank Allan
Frank Allan
Francis Erskine "Frank" Allan was an Australian cricketer who played in 1 Test in 1879....
was at Warnambool Agricultural Show and Australia’s best all-rounder Edwin Evans
Edwin Evans
Edwin Evans was an Australian cricketer who played in six Tests between 1881 and 1886.Born in Emu Plains, New South Wales and educated at Newington College , Evans was an off spinner with an ability to consistently land the ball wherever he wanted to and had some success in Australian first-class...
could not get away from work. In the end only five Australian-born players were selected.
The same could be said for Lillywhite’s team which, being selected from only four counties, meant that some of England’s best players did not take part. In addition, the team had a rough voyage back across the Tasman Sea
Tasman Sea
The Tasman Sea is the large body of water between Australia and New Zealand, approximately across. It extends 2,800 km from north to south. It is a south-western segment of the South Pacific Ocean. The sea was named after the Dutch explorer Abel Janszoon Tasman, the first recorded European...
and many members had been seasick. The game was due to be played on 15 March, the day after their arrival, but most had not yet fully recovered. On top of that, wicket-keeper Ted Pooley
Ted Pooley
Edward William 'Ted' Pooley was an English cricketer. Ted Pooley's greatest claim to fame is that he should have been England's first Test match wicket keeper...
was still in a New Zealand prison after a brawl in a Christchurch
Christchurch
Christchurch is the largest city in the South Island of New Zealand, and the country's second-largest urban area after Auckland. It lies one third of the way down the South Island's east coast, just north of Banks Peninsula which itself, since 2006, lies within the formal limits of...
pub.
England were nonetheless favourites to win the game and the first ever Test match began with a crowd of only 1000 watching. The Australians elected Dave Gregory
Dave Gregory (cricketer)
David William Gregory was an Australian cricketer of the 19th century. A right-handed batsman, Gregory was the first Australian national cricket captain, leading the side for the first three recognised Test matches between England and Australia in March and April 1877 and January 1879...
from New South Wales as Australia’s first ever captain and on winning the toss he decided to bat.
Charles Bannerman
Charles Bannerman was an Australian Test cricketer, a right-hand batsman, who played domestic cricket for New South Wales....
scored an unbeaten 165 before retiring hurt. Sydney Cricket Ground
Sydney Cricket Ground
The Sydney Cricket Ground is a sports stadium in Sydney in Australia. It is used for Australian football, Test cricket, One Day International cricket, some rugby league and rugby union matches and is the home ground for the New South Wales Blues cricket team and the Sydney Swans of the Australian...
curator, Ned Gregory
Ned Gregory
Edward James Gregory was an Australian cricketer who played in the first recognised Test in 1877 between Australia and England in Melbourne....
, playing in his one and only Test for Australia, scored Test cricket’s first duck
Duck (cricket)
In the sport of cricket, a duck refers to a batsman's dismissal for a score of zero.-Origin of the term:The term is a shortening of the term "duck's egg", the latter being used long before Test cricket began...
. Australia racked up 245 and 104 while England scored 196 and 108 giving Australia victory by 45 runs. The win hinged on Bannerman’s century and a superb bowling performance by Tom Kendall
Tom Kendall
Thomas Kingston Kendall was an Australian cricketer, who played in two Tests in 1877, including the inaugural Test which was played at the Melbourne Cricket Ground in March 1877....
who took of 7 for 55 in England’s second innings.
A fortnight later there was a return game, although it was really more of a benefit for the English team. Australia included Spofforth, Murdoch and T.J.D. Cooper in the side but this time the honours went to England who won by four wickets.
Two years later Lord Harris
George Harris, 4th Baron Harris
George Robert Canning Harris, 4th Baron Harris, GCSI, GCIE was a British politician, cricketer and cricket administrator...
brought another England team out and during England’s first innings in the Test at the MCG, Fred Spofforth took the first hat-trick in Test cricket. He bagged two hauls of 6 for 48 and 7 for 62 in Australia’s ten wicket win.
Later cricket
On Boxing Day 1866 an Indigenous Australian cricket team played at the MCG with 11,000 spectators against an MCC team. A few players in that match were in a later team that toured England in 18681868 Aboriginal cricket tour of England
The Australian Aboriginal cricket team in England in 1868 was a side composed of Australian Aborigines which toured England between May and October of that year, thus becoming the first organised group of Australian cricketers to travel overseas...
. Some also played in three other matches at the ground before 1869.
Sydney Cricket Ground
The Sydney Cricket Ground is a sports stadium in Sydney in Australia. It is used for Australian football, Test cricket, One Day International cricket, some rugby league and rugby union matches and is the home ground for the New South Wales Blues cricket team and the Sydney Swans of the Australian...
and one at The Oval
The Oval
The Kia Oval, still commonly referred to by its original name of The Oval, is an international cricket ground in Kennington, in the London Borough of Lambeth. In the past it was also sometimes called the Kennington Oval...
in London. In 1882, England lost to a visiting Australian team in England for the first time. The match was played at The Oval in August on what was said to be a difficult pitch. Australian bowler Fred Spofforth
Fred Spofforth
Frederick Robert "Fred" Spofforth , also known as "The Demon Bowler", was arguably the Australian cricket team's finest pace bowler of the nineteenth century and was the first bowler to take 50 Test wickets, and the first to take a test hat-trick in 1879...
decimated the English batting after a shocking start by the Australians and the result was a nailbiting finish in which Australia won by seven runs – still one of the closest finishes in Test cricket history. The defeat was widely recorded in the English press and a mock obituary was published in The Sporting Times
The Sporting Times
The Sporting Times was a weekly British newspaper devoted chiefly to sport, and in particular to horse racing...
, lamenting the death of English cricket and noted that "the body will be cremated and the ashes taken to Australia".
Later that year, the Honourable Ivo Bligh led a team of eight amateurs and four professionals to Australia to recover them, with the first two matches of the tour played at the MCG. The first being a timeless match (as was the custom in those days) that commenced on 30 December. On New Year's Day the attendance was 23,000, and Australia won the match by nine wickets in three days. The second match commenced on 19 January 1883 and was won comfortably by England by an innings and 27 runs.
The Ashes
The Ashes is a Test cricket series played between England and Australia. It is one of the most celebrated rivalries in international cricket and dates back to 1882. It is currently played biennially, alternately in the United Kingdom and Australia. Cricket being a summer sport, and the venues...
" as Bligh had set out to do. A group of Melbourne women presented Bligh with a small urn and the Ashes tradition was then firmly established.
Donald Bradman
Donald Bradman
Sir Donald George Bradman, AC , often referred to as "The Don", was an Australian cricketer, widely acknowledged as the greatest batsman of all time...
's record at the MCG is an average of 128 runs in 17 innings. In the 11 Tests that he played there, he made at least one century in nine of them.
Australia’s highest first class score was posted at the MCG when Victoria made 1107 against New South Wales in 1926–27. Jack Ryder scored 295 for the Vics and hit six sixes in the process.
Highlights and lowlights
One of the most sensational incidents in Test cricket occurred at the MCG during the Melbourne test of the 1954–55 England tour of Australia. Big cracks had appeared in the pitch during a very hot Saturday’s play and on the rest day Sunday, groundsman Jack House watered the pitch to close them up. This was illegal and the story was leaked by The Age newspaper. The teams agreed to finish the match and England won by 128 runs after Frank TysonFrank Tyson
Frank Holmes Tyson is an England cricketer of the 1950s who became a journalist and cricket commentator after he emigrated to Australia in 1960. Nicknamed "Typhoon Tyson" by the press he was regarded by many commentators as one of the fastest bowlers ever seen in cricket and took 76 wickets in...
took 7 for 27 in the final innings.
An incident in the second Test of the 1960–61 series involved the West Indies
West Indian cricket team
The West Indian cricket team, also known colloquially as the West Indies or the Windies, is a multi-national cricket team representing a sporting confederation of 15 mainly English-speaking Caribbean countries, British dependencies and non-British dependencies.From the mid 1970s to the early 1990s,...
player Joe Solomon
Joe Solomon
Joseph Stanislaus Solomon is a former West Indian cricketer who played 27 Tests for the West Indies. He played Test cricket from 1958 to 1965, scoring 1326 runs, mainly from number six and seven in the batting line-up...
being given out after his hat fell on the stumps after being bowled at by Richie Benaud
Richie Benaud
Richard "Richie" Benaud OBE is a former Australian cricketer who, since his retirement from international cricket in 1964, has become a highly regarded commentator on the game....
. The crowd sided with the West Indies over the Australians.
Not only was the first Test match played at the MCG, the first One Day International match was also played there, on 5 January 1971, between Australia and England. Australia won the 40-over match by 5 wickets. The next ODI was played on August 1972, some 19 months later.
In March 1977, the Australian Cricket Board assembled 218 of the surviving 224 Australia-England players for a Test match to celebrate 100 years of Test cricket between the two nations. The match was the idea of former Australian bowler and MCC committee member Hans Ebeling who had been responsible for developing the cricket museum at the MCG.
The match had everything. England’s Derek Randall scored 174, Australia’s Rod Marsh also got a century, Lillee took 11 wickets, and David Hookes, in his first test, smacked five fours in a row off England captain Tony Greig’s bowling. Rick McCosker who opened for Australia suffered a fractured jaw after being hit by a sharply rising delivery. He left the field but came back in the second innings with his head swathed in bandages. Incredibly Australia won by 45 runs, exactly the same margin as the first test in 1877.
A less savoury incident occurred in 1981 when Indian batsmen Sunil Gavaskar and Chetan Chauhan walked off the field in a test against Australia. Gavaskar was unhappy with the umpire’s decision to give him out lbw.
A more celebrated unsavoury incident occurred on 1 February 1981 at the end of a one-day match between Australia and New Zealand. New Zealand, batting second, needed six runs off the last ball of the day to tie the game. Australian captain, Greg Chappell instructed his brother Trevor, who was bowling the last over, to send the last ball down underarm
Underarm bowling incident of 1981
The underarm bowling incident of 1981 took place on 1 February 1981, when Australia was playing New Zealand in a One Day International cricket match, the third of five such matches in the final of the Benson & Hedges World Series Cup, at the Melbourne Cricket Ground...
to prevent the New Zealand batsman, Brian McKechnie, from hitting the ball for six. Although not entirely in the spirit of the game, an underarm delivery was quite legal, so long as the arm was kept straight. The Laws of cricket have since been changed to prevent such a thing happening again. The incident has long been a sore point between Australia and New Zealand. Chappell’s decision was taken against the advice of his vice-captain Rod Marsh and other senior players. On the surface it seems baffling. McKechnie was a tailender who had just come to the crease. His chances of hitting his first ball for six on the vast MCG were apparently nil and even if he did manage to get it over the fence New Zealand would not win but only draw the game. However, the series was tied and draw would mean both teams would have to front up again for another match. Chappell wanted the game and the series finished to give his players a rest. He was taking no chances against McKechnie, a dual cricket and rugby international.
Benson & Hedges
Benson & Hedges is a British brand of cigarettes owned by the Gallaher Group, which became a subsidiary of Japan Tobacco in 2007. They are registered in Old Bond Street in London, and are manufactured in Lisnafillen, Ballymena, Northern Ireland for the UK and Irish markets.-History:Benson & Hedges...
World Championship of Cricket
World Championship of Cricket
The Benson & Hedges World Championship of Cricket was a One Day International tournament held from 17 February to 10 March 1985 in Australia and won by India....
was played at the MCG, a One Day International tournament involving all of the then Test match playing countries to celebrate 150 years of the Australian state of Victoria. Some matches were also played at Sydney Cricket Ground
Sydney Cricket Ground
The Sydney Cricket Ground is a sports stadium in Sydney in Australia. It is used for Australian football, Test cricket, One Day International cricket, some rugby league and rugby union matches and is the home ground for the New South Wales Blues cricket team and the Sydney Swans of the Australian...
.
The MCG hosted the historic 1992 Cricket World Cup
1992 Cricket World Cup
-New Zealand:-Round Robin Stage:Co-hosts New Zealand proved the surprise packet of the tournament, winning their first seven games to finish on top of the table after the round robin. The other hosts, Australia, were one of the pre-tournament favourites but lost their first two matches. They...
final between Pakistan
Pakistani cricket team
The Pakistan cricket team is the national cricket team of Pakistan. Pakistan, represented by the Pakistan Cricket Board , is a full member of the International Cricket Council, and thus participates in , and cricket matches....
and England
English cricket team
The England and Wales cricket team is a cricket team which represents England and Wales. Until 1992 it also represented Scotland. Since 1 January 1997 it has been governed by the England and Wales Cricket Board , having been previously governed by Marylebone Cricket Club from 1903 until the end...
with a crowd of more than 87,000. Pakistan won the match after sterling all-round performance by Wasim Akram
Wasim Akram
Wasim Akram is a former Pakistani left arm fast bowler and left-handed batsman in cricketer and model. who represented the Pakistan national cricket team in Test cricket and One Day International matches....
who scored 33 runs and picked up 3 crucial wickets to make Pakistan cricket world champions for the first and as of yet only time. The match was also Imran Khan
Imran Khan
Imran Khan Niazi is a Pakistani politician and former Pakistani cricketer, playing international cricket for two decades in the late twentieth century. After retiring, he entered politics...
's last match after which he retired.
During the 1995 Boxing Day Test at the MCG, Australian umpire Darrell Hair
Darrell Hair
Darrell Bruce Hair is an Australian former Test match cricket umpire, from New South Wales. He stood on the Emirates International panel of umpires from 2002 to 2003, before he, along with fellow Australian Simon Taufel, and New Zealander Billy Bowden, was appointed to the ICC Elite umpire panel...
called Sri Lankan
Sri Lankan cricket team
The Sri Lankan cricket team is the national cricket team of Sri Lanka. The team first played international cricket in 1926–27, and were later awarded Test status in 1981, which made Sri Lanka the eighth Test cricket playing nation...
spin bowler Muttiah Muralitharan
Muttiah Muralitharan
Muttiah Muralitharan , often referred to as Murali, is a former Sri Lankan cricketer who was rated the greatest Test match bowler ever by Wisden Cricketers' Almanack in 2002...
for throwing the ball, rather than bowling it, seven times during the match. The other umpires did not call him once and this caused a controversy, although he was later called for throwing by other umpires seven other times in different matches.
Warming up
A warm-up is usually performed before participating in technical sports or exercising. A warm-up generally consists of a gradual increase in intensity in physical activity , a joint mobility exercise, stretching and a sport related activity. For example, before running or playing an intense sport...
stretches performed by Merv Hughes
Merv Hughes
Mervyn Gregory Hughes is a former Australian cricketer. A right-arm fast bowler, he represented Australia between 1985 and 1994 in 53 Test matches, taking 212 wickets. He played 33 One Day Internationals, taking 38 wickets. He took a hat trick in a Test against the West Indies at the WACA in...
would often be mimicked by the crowd at Bay 13. In a One-Day International cricket match in the late 1990s, the behaviour of Bay 13 was so bad that Shane Warne
Shane Warne
Shane Keith Warne is a former Australian international cricketer widely regarded as one of the greatest bowlers in the history of the game. In 2000, he was selected by a panel of cricket experts as one of the five Wisden Cricketers of the Century, the only specialist bowler selected in the quintet...
had to enter the ground from his dressing rooms and tell the crowd to settle down at the request of opposing England captain Alec Stewart
Alec Stewart
Alec James Stewart OBE is a retired English cricketer, a right-handed batsman-wicketkeeper and former captain of the England cricket team...
.
| Highest attendance records for cricket matches at the MCG | ||||
| Number | Teams | Match type | Attendance | Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Australia v West Indies | Test | 90,800 | 11 February 1961 |
| 2 | Australia v England | Test | 89,155 | 26 December 2006 |
| 3 | Australia v England | Test | 87,789 | 4 January 1937 |
| 4 | England v Pakistan Pakistan Pakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a sovereign state in South Asia. It has a coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east and China in the far northeast. In the north, Tajikistan... |
World Cup Final (day/night) | 87,182 | 25 March 1992 |
| 5 | Australia v West Indies | Benson & Hedges | 86,133 | 22 January 1984 |
| 6 | Australia v India | Twenty20 | 85,824 | 1 February 2008 |
Origins
Despite being called the Melbourne Cricket Ground, the stadium has been and continues to be used much more often for Australian rules football
Australian rules football
Australian rules football, officially known as Australian football, also called football, Aussie rules or footy is a sport played between two teams of 22 players on either...
, which reflects that football is Melbourne's most popular sport, winter or otherwise. Indeed, spectator numbers for football are larger than for any other sport in Australia, and it makes more money for the MCG than any of the other sports played there.
Although the Melbourne Cricket Club members were instrumental in founding Australian Rules Football, there were understandable concerns in the early days about the damage that might be done to the playing surface if football was allowed to be played at the MCG – after all it was a cricket ground. therefore, football games were often played in the parklands next to the cricket ground.
This was the case for the first documented football match to be played at the ground. Noted Melbourne cricketer Thomas Wills wrote a letter to the sporting newspaper, Bell's Life in Victoria, on 10 July 1858, suggesting a football club be formed so cricketers could keep fit during the winter months.
Three weeks later Bell's Life in Victoria published another item reporting that James Bryant, publican of the Parade Hotel (now the Melbourne Cricket Ground Hotel) on Wellington Parade close by Richmond Park, had offered to provide a ball for the next football game to be played.
It wasn’t this offer that kicked off football however, as much as headmasters of Australian schools following the trend in British public schools, introducing the idea of muscular Christianity through sport, and football in particular. Two headmasters, Dr John E. Bromby of Melbourne Church of England Grammar and St. Kilda Grammar’s William C. Northcott, arranged a game of football between their schools in 1858. The game was played on the open area just north of the Melbourne Cricket Ground on 31 July, the week of Bryant’s published offer, and was won by St Kilda Grammar.
It wasn’t until 1869 that football was played on the MCG proper, even though it was only a trial game involving a police team. It was not for another ten years, in 1879, after the formation of the Victorian Football Association, that the first official match was played on the MCG and the cricket ground itself became a regular venue for football. Night matches were even played that year using specially erected light towers.
In those early years the MCG was the home ground of Melbourne Football Club
Melbourne Football Club
The Melbourne Football Club, nicknamed The Demons, is an Australian rules football club playing in the Australian Football League , based in Melbourne, Victoria....
, Australia’s oldest, established in 1859 by the founder of the game itself, Thomas Wills. A founding member of the Victorian Football Association in 1877, Melbourne won five premierships in the early years using the MCG as its home ground. Melbourne originally played in white and were known as the ‘Invincible Whites’ but became the ‘Redlegs’ in 1872 and eventually the ‘Demons’ after World War II.
The first of nearly 2500 Victorian Football League/Australian Football League
Australian Football League
The Australian Football League is both the governing body and the major professional competition in the sport of Australian rules football...
games to be played at the MCG was on 15 May 1897, with beating 64 to 19.
Several Australian Football League (AFL) clubs use the MCG as their home ground; currently , , and . In 1965 Richmond played in its first home match at the MCG. In 1985 played its first home game against Collingwood at the MCG. Collingwood played its first home match at the MCG in 1994. Hawthorn played its first home match at the MCG in 2000.
Grand Finals
Since 1902 most grand finals have been played at the MCG. Those that were not included that at the end of the 1924 season. That year the premiership was decided at the end of a round robin series between the top four teams at the end of the home and away rounds. Thus all matches were played at the teams respective home venues. No grand finals were held at the MCG during World War II (the ground was used by the military), and the 1991 grand final was played at Waverley ParkWaverley Park
Waverley Park was an Australian rules football stadium in Mulgrave, Victoria, Australia. For most of its history, its purpose was as a neutral venue and used by all Victorian based Victorian Football League/Australian Football League clubs. However, during the 1990s it became the home ground of...
because construction of the Great Southern Stand at the MCG had temporarily reduced the ground’s capacity.
The first tied grand final to be played at the MCG was in 1948 when Essendon and Melbourne finished 69-all at the end of time. Essendon had dominated the season and finished well ahead of second placed Melbourne. They also beat Melbourne in the semi-final and were expected to win the grand final. However, Essendon scored an incredible 27 behinds and only seven goals to Melbourne’s 10 goals 9 behinds. To make things worse for Essendon, Melbourne thrashed Essendon by 39 points in the grand final replay the next week.
In 1966
1966 VFL Grand Final
The 1966 VFL Grand Final was an Australian rules football game contested between the Collingwood Football Club and St Kilda Football Club, held at the Melbourne Cricket Ground in Melbourne on 24 September 1966. It was the 70th annual grand final of the Victorian Football League , staged to...
one of the closest grand final results was between St Kilda and Collingwood. St Kilda was playing in only its third grand final since the founding of the club in 1873. They had been well beaten in the grand final the previous year but this year scores were much closer. In fact the scores were level at the end of regulation time when 17-year old Barry Breen mis-kicked towards goal and the ball scraped in for one point, enough to give St Kilda its first flag.
The 1977 season saw one of the most remarkable changes in form in the history of the game. Collingwood finished last in the 1976 competition but under new coach Tom Hafey found themselves in the 1977 VFL Grand Final
1977 VFL Grand Final
The 1977 VFL Grand Final was an Australian rules football game contested between the North Melbourne Football Club and the Collingwood Football Club, held at the Melbourne Cricket Ground in Melbourne on 24 September 1977...
. It was the first grand final to be televised live in Victoria and viewers tuned in to find Collingwood led by 27 points at three-quarter time. But North came back in the final period to kick five unanswered goals and overhaul the Magpies. Collingwood did managed to score one goal in the final quarter, Ross ‘Twiggy’ Dunne kicked it in the final minute to level the scores. The replay was North’s fifth consecutive finals match that year and they won it to take their second premiership.
The MCG and the VFL/AFL
For many years the VFL had an uneasy relationship with the MCG trustees and the Melbourne Cricket ClubMelbourne Cricket Club
The Melbourne Cricket Club is a sporting club based in Melbourne, Australia. It was founded in 1838 and is regarded as the oldest sporting club in Australia....
. Both needed the other, but resented the dependence. The VFL made the first move which brought things to a head by beginning the development of VFL Park at Mulgrave
Mulgrave, Victoria
Mulgrave is a suburb in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 21 km south-east from Melbourne's central business district. Its Local Government Area is the City of Monash. At the 2006 Census, Mulgrave had a population of 16,280....
in the 1960s as its own home ground and as a potential venue for future grand finals. Then in 1983, president of the VFL, Alan Aylett started to pressure the MCG Trust to give the VFL a greater share of the money it made from using the ground for football.
In March 1983 the MCG trustees met to consider a submission from Aylett. Aylett said he wanted the Melbourne Cricket Club’s share of revenue cut from 15 per cent to 10 per cent. He threatened to take the following day’s opening game of the season, Collingwood vs Melbourne, away from the MCG. The trustees knew he couldn’t do it, but they agreed to a compromise. The money was held aside until an agreement could be reached.
Different deals, half deals and possible deals were done over the years, with the Premier of Victoria, John Cain
John Cain II
John Cain , Australian Labor Party politician, was the 41st Premier of Victoria, holding office from 1982 to 1990.-Biography:...
, even becoming involved. Cain was said to have promised the VFL it could use the MCG for six months of the year and then hand it back to the MCC, but this never eventuated, as the MCG Trust did not approve it. In the mid 1980s a deal was done where the VFL was given its own members area in the Northern Stand (which is always conspicuously empty, except on Grand Final day).
Against this background of political manoeuvring, in 1985 became the third club to make the MCG its home ground. In the same year, North played in the first night football match at the MCG for almost 110 years, against Collingwood on 29 March 1985.
In 1986, only a month after Ross Oakley
Ross Oakley
Ross Oakley is an Australian businessman and former Australian rules footballer with St Kilda in the VFL. He is CEO of the Victorian Rugby Union and was appointed CEO of the new the Melbourne Rebels rugby union franchise in September 2010.-Playing career:Oakley attended Wesley College, Melbourne ...
had taken over as VFL Commissioner, VFL executives met with the MCC and took a big step towards resolving their differences. Changes in the personnel at the MCC also helped. In 1983 John Lill
John Lill (cricketer)
Dr John Charles Lill is a former Australian first-class cricketer who represented South Australia. He was a member of the South Australian team which won the Sheffield Shield in 1963/64....
was appointed secretary and Don Cordner
Don Cordner
Dr Donald Cordner was an Australian rules footballer who played with Melbourne in the Victorian Football League during the 1940s...
its president.
Shortly after the Southern Stand opened in 1992, the Australian Football League moved its headquarters into the complex. The AFL assisted with financing the new stand and came to an agreement that ensures at least 45 AFL games are played at the MCG each year, including the grand final in September. Another 45 days of cricket are also played there each year and more than 3.5 million spectators come to watch every year.
In the current era most finals games held in Melbourne have been played at the MCG due to contracts between the AFL and MCC. Some contracts which had not been properly updated in the now national competition came to a head in 2004 when the were forced to play a "home" final against (who occasionally use the MCG as a home ground) at the MCG, due to a contract which stipulated that at least five finals matches must be played there per year and that at least one final must be played at the MCG each week of the finals. This marked the first time in the AFL where two non-Victorian clubs had earned the right to host all home games in a certain week of the finals. The contract has been renegotiated to allow interstate sides to have true home matches. However, Melbourne clubs based out of Etihad Stadium (which will eventually be owned by the Australian Football League) – as well as Geelong – are still required to play their home finals at the MCG. The AFL Grand Final is always played at the MCG, regardless of which teams may be playing.
Matthew Richardson
Matthew Richardson (Australian rules footballer)
Matthew "Richo" Richardson , is a retired professional Australian rules footballer who played for Richmond in the Australian Football League...
holds the records for having scored the most goals on the MCG, and Kevin Bartlett holds the record for playing the most matches at the MCG. Two players have scored 14 goals for an AFL or VFL game in one match at the MCG: Gary Ablett in 1989 and 1993, and John Longmire
John Longmire
John Longmire is the current coach of the Sydney Swans. As a player, he represented the North Melbourne Football Club in the Australian Football League from 1988 to 1999.-Early years:...
in 1990.
A State of Origin
Interstate matches in Australian rules football
Australian rules football matches between teams representing Australian colonies/states and territories have been held since 1879. For most of the 20th century, the absence of a national club competition and international matches meant that football games between state representative teams were...
football match was held on 1 July 1989 between Victoria and South Australia, attended by 91,960 people.
Before an AFL match between and on 27 August 1999, the city end scoreboard caught on fire due to an electrical fault, causing the start of play to be delayed by half an hour.
The 2008 AFL Grand Final
2008 AFL Grand Final
The 2008 AFL Grand Final was an Australian rules football match contested between the Geelong Football Club and the Hawthorn Football Club, held at the Melbourne Cricket Ground in Melbourne on the 27th of September 2008...
, played between and attracted a crowd of 100,012 to the venue for the first Grand Final between two Victorian AFL Teams since defeated in the 2000 AFL Grand Final
2000 AFL Grand Final
The 2000 AFL Grand Final was an Australian rules football game contested between the Essendon Football Club and the Melbourne Football Club, held at the Melbourne Cricket Ground in Melbourne on 2 September 2000. It was the 104th annual Grand Final of the Victorian Football League/Australian...
. This figure was bettered by just four people two years later, when 100,016 saw and fight out the first Grand Final draw
2010 AFL Grand Final
The 2010 AFL Grand Final is either of two Australian rules football contests between the Collingwood Football Club and the St Kilda Football Club. Together they are considered the 114th annual Grand Final of the Victorian Football League/Australian Football League, and were staged to determine the...
in 33 years.
Olympic Games
The MCG’s most famous moment in history was as the main stadium for the 1956 Olympic Games. The MCG was only one of seven possible venues, including the Melbourne Showgrounds, for the Games’ main arena. The MCG was the Federal Government’s preferred venue but there was resistance from the MCC. The inability to decide on the central venue nearly caused the Games to be moved from Melbourne. Prime Minister Robert MenziesRobert Menzies
Sir Robert Gordon Menzies, , Australian politician, was the 12th and longest-serving Prime Minister of Australia....
recognised the potential embarrassment to Australia if this happened and organised a three-day summit meeting to thrash things out. Attending was Victorian Premier John Cain
John Cain (senior)
John Cain was an Australian politician, who became the 34th premier of Victoria, and was the first Australian Labor Party leader to win a majority in the Victorian Legislative Assembly. He was the only premier of Victoria whose son also served as premier.-Early life:Cain was born, one of 18...
, the Prime Minister, deputy opposition leader Arthur Calwell
Arthur Calwell
Arthur Augustus Calwell Australian politician, was a member of the Australian House of Representatives for 32 years from 1940 to 1972, Immigration Minister in the government of Ben Chifley from 1945 to 1949 and Leader of the Australian Labor Party from 1960 to 1967.-Early life:Calwell was born in...
, all State political leaders, civic leaders, Olympic officials and trustees and officials of the MCC. Convening the meeting was no small effort considering the calibre of those attending and that many of the sports officials were only part-time amateurs.
As 22 November, the date of the opening ceremony, drew closer, Melbourne was gripped ever more tightly by Olympic fever. At 3 pm the day before the opening ceremony, people began to line up outside the MCG gates. That night the city was paralysed by a quarter of a million people who had come to celebrate.
The MCG's capacity was increased by the new Olympic (or Northern) Stand, and on the day itself 103,000 people filled the stadium to capacity. A young up and coming distance runner was chosen to carry the Olympic torch into the stadium for the opening ceremony.
Although Ron Clarke
Ron Clarke
Ronald William "Ron" Clarke, MBE is a former Australian athlete, writer, and current Mayor of the Gold Coast. He is one of the best known middle and long distance runners in the 1960s, notable for setting seventeen world records.- Early life and family :He attended Melbourne High School...
had a number of junior world records for distances of 1500 m, one mile (1.6 km) and two miles (3 km), he was relatively unknown in 1956. Perhaps the opportunity to carry the torch inspired him because he went on to have a career of exceptional brilliance and was without doubt the most outstanding runner of his day. At one stage he held the world record for every distance from two miles (3 km) to 20 km. His few failures came in Olympic and Commonwealth Games competition. Although favourite for the gold at Rome in 1960 he was placed ninth in the 5 km and the marathon and third in the 10 km. He lost again in the 1966 Commonwealth Games and in 1968 at altitude in Mexico he collapsed at the end of the 10 km race.
On that famous day in Melbourne in 1956 the torch spluttered and sparked, showering Clarke with hot magnesium, burning holes in his shirt. When he dipped the torch into the cauldron it burst into flame singeing him further. In the centre of the ground, John Landy, the fastest miler in the world, took the Olympic oath and sculler Merv Wood carried the Australian flag.
The Melbourne Games also saw the high point of Australian female sprinting with Betty Cuthbert
Betty Cuthbert
Elizabeth Cuthbert AM, MBE is an Australian athlete, and a fourfold Olympic champion....
winning three gold medals at the MCG. She won the 100 m and 200 m and anchored the winning 4 x 100 m team. Born in Merrylands in Sydney’s west she was a champion schoolgirl athlete and had already broken the world record for the 200 m just before the 1956 Games. She tended to be overshadowed somewhat by her Western Suburbs club mate, the better-known Marlene Matthews
Marlene Matthews
Marlene Judith Mathews AO is a former Australian Olympic sprinter. She has been described as 'one of Australia's greatest and unluckiest' champions.-Early career:...
. When they got to the Games, Matthews was the overwhelming favourite especially for the 100 m a distance over which Cuthbert had beaten her just once.
Both Matthews and Cuthbert won their heats with Matthews setting an Olympic record of 11.5 seconds in hers. Cuthbert broke that record in the following heat with a time of 11.4 seconds. The world record of 11.3 was held by another Australian, Shirley Strickland who was eliminated in her heat. In the final Matthews felt she got a bad start and was last at the 50 metre mark. Cuthbert sensed Isabella Daniels from the USA close behind her and pulled out a little extra to win Australia’s first gold at the Games in a time of 11.5 seconds, Matthews was third. The result was repeated in the 200 m final. Cuthbert won her second gold breaking Marjorie Jackson’s Olympic record. Mathews was third again.
By the time the 1956 Olympics came around, Shirley Strickland
Shirley Strickland
Shirley Barbara Strickland AO, MBE , later Shirley de la Hunty, was an Australian athlete. She won more Olympic medals than any other Australian in running sports.-Family:...
was a mother of 31 years of age but managed to defend her 80 m title, which she had won in Helsinki four years before, winning gold and setting a new Olympic record.
The sensational incident of the track events was the non-selection of Marlene Matthews in the 4 x 100 m relay. Matthews trained with the relay team up until the selection was made but Cuthbert, Strickland, Fleur Mellor and Norma Croker were picked for the team. There was outrage at the selection which increased when Matthews went on to run third in both the 100 m and 200 m finals. Personally she was devastated and felt that the she had been overlooked for her poor baton change. Strickland was disappointed with the way Matthews was treated and maintained it was an opinion held in New South Wales that she had baton problems. One of the selectors, Doris Magee from NSW, said that selecting Matthews increased the risk of disqualification at the change. But Cuthbert maintained that the selectors made the right choice saying that Fleur Mellor was fresh, a specialist relay runner and was better around the curves than Matthews.
The men did not fare so well. The 4 x 400 m relay team, including later IOC Committee member Kevan Gosper, won silver. Charles Porter also won silver in the high jump. Hec Hogan won bronze in the 100 m to become the first Australian man to win a medal in a sprint since the turn of the century and despite injury John Landy won bronze in the 1500 m. Allan Lawrence won bronze in the 10,000 m event.
Apart from athletics, the stadium was also used for the soccer finals, the hockey finals, the Opening and Closing Ceremonies, and an exhibition game of baseball between the Australian National Team and a US armed services team at which an estimated crowd of 114,000 attended. This was the Guiness World Record for the largest attendance for any baseball game, which stood until a 29 March 2008 exhibition game between the Boston Red Sox
Boston Red Sox
The Boston Red Sox are a professional baseball team based in Boston, Massachusetts, and a member of Major League Baseball’s American League Eastern Division. Founded in as one of the American League's eight charter franchises, the Red Sox's home ballpark has been Fenway Park since . The "Red Sox"...
and Los Angeles Dodgers
Los Angeles Dodgers
The Los Angeles Dodgers are a professional baseball team based in Los Angeles, California. The Dodgers are members of Major League Baseball's National League West Division. Established in 1883, the team originated in Brooklyn, New York, where it was known by a number of nicknames before becoming...
at the Los Angeles Coliseum (also a former Olympic venue) drawing 115,300.
The MCG was also used for another demonstration sport, Australian Rules. The Olympics being an amateur competition meant that only amateurs could play in the demonstration game. A combined team of amateurs from the VFL and VFA were selected to play a state team from the Victorian Amateur Football Association (VAFA). The game was played 7 December 1956 with the VAFA side, wearing white jumpers, green collars and the Olympic rings on their chests, winning easily 81 to 55.
The MCG’s link with its Olympic past continues to this day. Within its walls is the IOC-endorsed Australian Gallery of Sport and Olympic Museum.
Forty-four years later at the 2000 Summer Olympics
2000 Summer Olympics
The Sydney 2000 Summer Olympic Games or the Millennium Games/Games of the New Millennium, officially known as the Games of the XXVII Olympiad, were an international multi-sport event which was celebrated between 15 September and 1 October 2000 in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia...
in Sydney, the Grounds served as host to several football
Football at the 2000 Summer Olympics
The football tournament at the 2000 Summer Olympics was the 20th official Olympic football tournament. A women's tournament was held for the second time.-Medal winners:-Venues:*Olympic Stadium, Sydney*Sydney Football Stadium, Sydney*Bruce Stadium, Canberra...
preliminaries, making it one of a few venues ever used for more than one Olympics.
Commonwealth Games
The Opening and Closing Ceremonies of the 2006 Commonwealth Games were held at the MCG, as well as athletics events during the games. The games began on 15 March and ended on 26 March.Rugby league
Rugby leagueRugby league
Rugby league football, usually called rugby league, is a full contact sport played by two teams of thirteen players on a rectangular grass field. One of the two codes of rugby football, it originated in England in 1895 by a split from Rugby Football Union over paying players...
was first played at the ground on 15 August 1914, with a New South Wales
New South Wales
New South Wales is a state of :Australia, located in the east of the country. It is bordered by Queensland, Victoria and South Australia to the north, south and west respectively. To the east, the state is bordered by the Tasman Sea, which forms part of the Pacific Ocean. New South Wales...
team losing to England 15–21.
The first ever rugby league
Rugby league
Rugby league football, usually called rugby league, is a full contact sport played by two teams of thirteen players on a rectangular grass field. One of the two codes of rugby football, it originated in England in 1895 by a split from Rugby Football Union over paying players...
State of Origin
Rugby League State of Origin
State of Origin is an annual best of three series of rugby league football matches contested by the Maroons and the Blues, who represent the Australian states of Queensland and New South Wales respectively...
match at the MCG (and second in Melbourne) was played on 8 June 1994, attracting a then record league crowd in Australia of 87,161. Games were also played there in 1995 and 1997.
The Melbourne Storm
Melbourne Storm
The Melbourne Storm are an Australian professional rugby league club based in the city of Melbourne. They are the first fully professional rugby league team based in the Australian rules football-dominated state of Victoria....
played two marquee games at the MCG in 2000. This was the first time that they had played outside of their normal home ground of Olympic Park Stadium
Olympic Park Stadium
Olympic Park Stadium was a multi-purpose outdoor stadium located on Olympic Boulevard in inner Melbourne. The stadium was built as an athletics training venue for the 1956 Olympics, a short distance from the MCG, which served as the Olympic Stadium...
which holds 18,500 people.
Their first game was held on 3 March 2000 against the St. George Illawarra Dragons in a rematch of the infamous 1999 Grand Final. Anthony Mundine
Anthony Mundine
Anthony Mundine is an Australian professional boxer and former rugby league footballer.He is the current interim WBA Light Middleweight Champion boxer, former two-time WBA Super Middleweight Champion, former IBO Middleweight Champion and New South Wales State of Origin representative footballer....
said they were 'not worthy premiers' and the Storm responded by running in 12 tries to two and winning 70–10 in front of 23,239 fans. This was their biggest crowd they had played against until 33,427 turned up to the 2007 Preliminary Final at Docklands Stadium. The record home and away crowd record has also been overhauled, when a match at Docklands in 2010 against St George attracted 25,480 spectators.
Their second game attracted only 15,535 spectators and was up against the Cronulla Sharks
Cronulla Sharks
The Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks are Australian professional Rugby league team based in Cronulla, in the Sutherland Shire, Southern Sydney, New South Wales...
on 24 June 2000. Once again, the Storm won 22–16.
Since then, there has been recent talk of Rugby League's State of Origin Series returning to the venue after the stadium put in a bid to host games in 2008.
Soccer
On 9 February 2006, the then Victorian premier Steve BracksSteve Bracks
Stephen Philip Bracks AC is a former Australian politician and the 44th Premier of Victoria. He first won the electoral district of Williamstown in 1994 for the Australian Labor Party, and was party leader and Premier from 1999 to 2007....
and Football Federation Australia
Football Federation Australia
Football Federation Australia is the governing body for the sport of football in Australia. Before 1 January 2005, it was known as the Australian Soccer Association , which succeeded Soccer Australia in this role in 2003...
chairman Frank Lowy
Frank Lowy
Frank Lowy, AC is an Australian-Israeli businessman. He is a co-founder of the Westfield Group, operator of over 100 shopping centres in Australia, New Zealand, the United States and Great Britain...
announced that the MCG would host a world class soccer event each year from 2006 until 2009 inclusive. The announcement came as the game gained further popularity in the country following the qualification for the 2006 FIFA World Cup
2006 FIFA World Cup
The 2006 FIFA World Cup was the 18th FIFA World Cup, the quadrennial international football world championship tournament. It was held from 9 June to 9 July 2006 in Germany, which won the right to host the event in July 2000. Teams representing 198 national football associations from all six...
in Germany.
UEFA European Football Championship
The UEFA European Football Championship is the main football competition of the men's national football teams governed by UEFA . Held every four years since 1960, in the even-numbered year between World Cup tournaments, it was originally called the UEFA European Nations Cup, changing to the current...
Greece
Greece national football team
The Greece national football team represents Greece in association football and is controlled by the Hellenic Football Federation, the governing body for football in Greece. Greece's home ground is Karaiskakis Stadium in Piraeus and their head coach is Fernando Santos...
on 25 May 2006 in front of a sell-out crowd of 95,103, before Australia left to contest in the World Cup finals. Australia beat Greece 1–0. The Socceroos also hosted a match in 2007 against Argentina, losing 1–0, as well as 2010 FIFA World Cup qualification
2010 FIFA World Cup qualification (AFC)
The Asian Football Confederation was allocated four assured qualifying berths for the 2010 FIFA World Cup, and one place in a play-off. 43 teams were in the running for these spots; Laos, Brunei and the Philippines did not attempt to qualify...
matches in 2009 against Asian Football heavyweights (Japan) which attracted 81,872 fans as Australia beat Japan 2–1 via 2 Tim Cahill trademark headers after falling behind 1–0 late in the 1st half.
In 2010 it was announced that as a warm up to the 2010 FIFA World Cup
2010 FIFA World Cup
The 2010 FIFA World Cup was the 19th FIFA World Cup, the world championship for men's national association football teams. It took place in South Africa from 11 June to 11 July 2010...
which the Australians had qualified for, they would play fellow qualified nation New Zealand
New Zealand national soccer team
The New Zealand national football team, nicknamed the All Whites, is the national association football team of New Zealand and is governed by New Zealand Football . The team plays in an all-white strip rather than the traditional New Zealand sporting black due to a former FIFA regulation that...
on 24 May at the MCG.
Other matches played at the MCG include the following:
- An exhibition match between Australia and Juventus played on 13 June 1984
- A 1998 FIFA World Cup1998 FIFA World CupThe 1998 FIFA World Cup, the 16th FIFA World Cup, was held in France from 10 June to 12 July 1998. France was chosen as host nation by FIFA on 2 July 1992. The tournament was won by France, who beat Brazil 3-0 in the final...
qualifier between the Socceroos and IranIran national football teamThe national football team of Iran represents Iran in international football competitions and is controlled by the Football Federation Islamic Republic of Iran...
on Saturday 29 November 1997. The match was drawn 2–2, with Iran progressing on the away goal rule.
- An exhibition match between Manchester United and Australia on 15 July 1999.
- A friendly match between Brazil BBrazil national football teamThe Brazil national football team represents Brazil in international men's football and is controlled by the Brazilian Football Confederation , the governing body for football in Brazil. They are a member of the International Federation of Association Football since 1923 and also a member of the...
and Australia on 17 November 1999.
- An Olympic Tournament group match between ItalyItaly national football teamThe Italy National Football Team , represents Italy in association football and is controlled by the Italian Football Federation , the governing body for football in Italy. Italy is the second most successful national team in the history of the World Cup having won four titles , just one fewer than...
and the Olyroos on 13 September 2000. Plus other preliminary matches during the Olympics which also included quarter final and the Semi final between Chile and Cameroon who went on to win the gold medal.
- A 2002 FIFA World Cup2002 FIFA World CupThe 2002 FIFA World Cup was the 17th staging of the FIFA World Cup, held in South Korea and Japan from 31 May to 30 June. It was also the first World Cup held in Asia, and the last in which the golden goal rule was implemented. Brazil won the tournament for a record fifth time, beating Germany 2–0...
qualifier between the Australia and UruguayUruguay national football teamThe Uruguayan national football team represents Uruguay in international association football and is controlled by the Uruguayan Football Association, the governing body for football in Uruguay. The current head coach is Óscar Tabárez...
on Tuesday 20 November 2001. The Socceroos won 1–0, however Uruguay progressed after later winning the second leg 3–0.
- A friendly match between Australia and than European champions, Greece – which was played as a warmup to the 2006 FIFA World Cup2006 FIFA World CupThe 2006 FIFA World Cup was the 18th FIFA World Cup, the quadrennial international football world championship tournament. It was held from 9 June to 9 July 2006 in Germany, which won the right to host the event in July 2000. Teams representing 198 national football associations from all six...
- A friendly match between Australia and Argentina – Argentina had a full strength side with superstars such as Lionel MessiLionel MessiLionel Andrés "Leo" Messi is an Argentine footballer who plays for FC Barcelona and captains the Argentina national team, mainly as a striker. Messi received several Ballon d'Or and FIFA World Player of the Year nominations by the age of 21, and won in 2009 and 2010...
and Carlos TévezCarlos TévezCarlos Alberto Tévez is an Argentine professional footballer who plays as a forward for English club Manchester City... - A friendly match between Australia and the All WhitesNew Zealand national soccer teamThe New Zealand national football team, nicknamed the All Whites, is the national association football team of New Zealand and is governed by New Zealand Football . The team plays in an all-white strip rather than the traditional New Zealand sporting black due to a former FIFA regulation that...
as a warm up before the 2010 FIFA World Cup2010 FIFA World CupThe 2010 FIFA World Cup was the 19th FIFA World Cup, the world championship for men's national association football teams. It took place in South Africa from 11 June to 11 July 2010...
in which Australia won in the very last play of the game.
Tennis
In 1878 the Melbourne Cricket Club’s Lawn Tennis Committee laid an asphalt court at the MCG and Victoria’s first game of tennis was played there. A second court of grass was laid in 1879 and the first Victorian Championship played on it in 1880. The first inter-colonial championship was played in 1883 and the first formal inter-state match between NSW and Victoria played in 1884 with Victoria winning.In 1889 the MCC arranged for tennis to be played at the then Warehousemen’s Cricket Ground, now the Albert Ground, at Albert Park, rather than the MCG.
Cycling
It was at the MCG in 1869 that Australia’s first bicycle race was held. The event was for velocipedes, crude wooden machines with pedals on the front wheels. In 1898 the Austral Wheel RaceAustral Wheel Race
The Austral Wheel Race is the oldest track bicycle race in the world still existing, stretching back to 1887. The Austral race is Australia’s greatest track cycling event. It is held in Melbourne, riders assigned handicaps according to ability over a series of heats. The finals are run over...
was held at the MCG attracting a crowd of 30,000 to see cyclists race for a total of £200 in prize money.
Other uses
- Australia played New Zealand in rugby unionRugby unionRugby union, often simply referred to as rugby, is a full contact team sport which originated in England in the early 19th century. One of the two codes of rugby football, it is based on running with the ball in hand...
at the MCG on 26 July 1997, losing 18–33 in front of a crowd of 90,119. and in 30 June 2007, Winning 20–15 in front of a crowd of 79,322.
- During World War IIWorld War IIWorld War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
the stands were used by the Australian and American armies. It was used by the US Army Air Forces who moved into the MCG and gave the name of their base "Camp Murphy". It was also used by the First Division of the US Marine CorpsMarine corpsA marine is a member of a force that specializes in expeditionary operations such as amphibious assault and occupation. The marines traditionally have strong links with the country's navy...
, an RAAF Technical Training unit and as the RAAF Personnel Depot. The RAAF stayed at the MCG until 27 October 1945.
- Queen Elizabeth II visited the MCG in 1954 twice for an assembly and display. She attended a Richmond versus Fitzroy match on 5 April 1970, and also attended the Commonwealth Games Opening Ceremony at the ground on 15 March 2006.
- A record for attendance at the grounds was set by religious leader Billy GrahamBilly GrahamWilliam Franklin "Billy" Graham, Jr. is an American evangelical Christian evangelist. As of April 25, 2010, when he met with Barack Obama, Graham has spent personal time with twelve United States Presidents dating back to Harry S. Truman, and is number seven on Gallup's list of admired people for...
whose event in 1959 was attended by at least 130,000 people.
- The first rock concert to be held at the ground was one by David CassidyDavid CassidyDavid Bruce Cassidy is an American actor, singer, songwriter and guitarist. He is best known for his role as the character of Keith Partridge in the 1970s musical/sitcom The Partridge Family. He was one of pop culture's most celebrated teen idols, enjoying a successful pop career in the 1970s, and...
in 1974. In 1978 David BowieDavid BowieDavid Bowie is an English musician, actor, record producer and arranger. A major figure for over four decades in the world of popular music, Bowie is widely regarded as an innovator, particularly for his work in the 1970s...
held a concert there. In 1993, Paul McCartneyPaul McCartneySir James Paul McCartney, MBE, Hon RAM, FRCM is an English musician, singer-songwriter and composer. Formerly of The Beatles and Wings , McCartney is listed in Guinness World Records as the "most successful musician and composer in popular music history", with 60 gold discs and sales of 100...
, U2U2U2 are an Irish rock band from Dublin. Formed in 1976, the group consists of Bono , The Edge , Adam Clayton , and Larry Mullen, Jr. . U2's early sound was rooted in post-punk but eventually grew to incorporate influences from many genres of popular music...
and MadonnaMadonna (entertainer)Madonna is an American singer-songwriter, actress and entrepreneur. Born in Bay City, Michigan, she moved to New York City in 1977 to pursue a career in modern dance. After performing in the music groups Breakfast Club and Emmy, she released her debut album in 1983...
held concerts, drawing huge crowds. The Rolling Stones held concerts in 1995, Michael JacksonMichael JacksonMichael Joseph Jackson was an American recording artist, entertainer, and businessman. Referred to as the King of Pop, or by his initials MJ, Jackson is recognized as the most successful entertainer of all time by Guinness World Records...
in 1996, the Three Tenors in 1997, Elton JohnElton JohnSir Elton Hercules John, CBE, Hon DMus is an English rock singer-songwriter, composer, pianist and occasional actor...
and Billy JoelBilly JoelWilliam Martin "Billy" Joel is an American musician and pianist, singer-songwriter, and classical composer. Since releasing his first hit song, "Piano Man", in 1973, Joel has become the sixth best-selling recording artist and the third best-selling solo artist in the United States, according to...
in 1998.
- Pope John Paul IIPope John Paul IIBlessed Pope John Paul II , born Karol Józef Wojtyła , reigned as Pope of the Catholic Church and Sovereign of Vatican City from 16 October 1978 until his death on 2 April 2005, at of age. His was the second-longest documented pontificate, which lasted ; only Pope Pius IX ...
held a service at the MCG on 27 November 1986, and a celebration there of the Polish community the next day.
- The MCG hosted the 2007 Bledisloe CupBledisloe CupRugby Union's Bledisloe Cup is contested by the Australia national rugby union team and New Zealand national rugby union team. It is named after Lord Bledisloe, the former Governor-General of New Zealand who donated the trophy in 1931. The trophy was designed in New Zealand by Nelson Isaac, and...
match during the Tri NationsRugby Union Tri NationsThe Rugby Championship is an international rugby union competition contested annually by Argentina, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. The competition is organized by SANZAR, a consortium formed by the governing bodies of the Australian Rugby Union, the New Zealand Rugby Union and the South...
series.
- The MCG hosted The PoliceThe PoliceThe Police were an English rock band formed in London in 1977. For the vast majority of their history, the band consisted of Sting , Andy Summers and Stewart Copeland...
with Special Guests Fergie & Fiction PlaneFiction PlaneFiction Plane is a rock band from England. Originally formed in London under the name Santa’s Boyfriend in 2001, Fiction Plane is currently composed of lead vocalist, guitar and bass player Joe Sumner ; guitarist Seton Daunt; and American drummer Pete Wilhoit.-Recording history:Fiction Plane’s...
on Australia DayAustralia DayAustralia Day is the official national day of Australia...
2008; the first MCG concert in 10 years.
- The MCG hosted Sound ReliefSound ReliefSound Relief was a multi-venue rock music concert held on 14 March 2009, which was announced by the Premier of Victoria, John Brumby on 24 February 2009...
, a concert donating all revenues to the Red Cross Victorian Bushfire Appeal with performances from Kings Of LeonKings of LeonKings of Leon is an American rock band that originated in Albion, Oklahoma but formed in Nashville, Tennessee in 1999. The band is composed of brothers Anthony Caleb Followill , Ivan Nathan Followill and Michael Jared Followill Kings of Leon is an American rock band that originated in Albion,...
, Midnight OilMidnight OilMidnight Oil , were an Australian rock band from Sydney originally performing as Farm from 1972 with drummer Rob Hirst, bass guitarist Andrew James and keyboard player/lead guitarist Jim Moginie...
, Split EnzSplit EnzSplit Enz were a New Zealand band of the 1970s and early 1980s featuring Phil Judd and brothers Tim Finn and Neil Finn. They achieved chart success in New Zealand, Australia, and Canada during the early 1980s ‒ most notably with the single "I Got You", and built a cult following elsewhere...
, Paul KellyPaul Kelly (musician)Paul Maurice Kelly is an Australian rock music singer-songwriter, guitarist, and harmonica player. He has performed solo, and has led numerous groups, including the Dots, the Coloured Girls, and the Messengers. He has worked with other artists and groups, including associated projects Professor...
, Hunters & CollectorsHunters & CollectorsHunters & Collectors were an Australian rock music band formed in Melbourne in 1981, fronted by singer-songwriter and guitarist Mark Seymour, they developed a blend of pub rock and art-funk...
, WolfmotherWolfmotherWolfmother is an Australian rock band from Erskineville, Sydney. Formed in 2000, the group was originally a trio composed of vocalist and guitarist Andrew Stockdale, bassist and keyboardist Chris Ross and drummer Myles Heskett. Wolfmother released their self-titled debut album in October 2005,...
, JetJet (band)Jet are an Australian rock band formed in 2001 while attending St Bede's College Mentone in Melbourne, . The band consists of lead guitarist Cameron Muncey, bassist Mark Wilson, and brothers Nic and Chris Cester on vocals/rhythm guitar and drums respectively...
and Bliss N EsoBliss n EsoBliss n Eso are an ARIA Award-winning Australian hip hop band based in Sydney, and were originally known as Bliss N' Esoterikizm for their debut EP The Arrival...
, among others. It was held on 14 March 2009.
- On 5 November 2010, the MCG was the starting point for The Amazing Race AustraliaThe Amazing Race AustraliaThe Amazing Race Australia is an Australian reality television game show based on the American reality television series, The Amazing Race that is broadcast on the Seven Network. The series features eleven teams of two who are in a pre-existing personal relationship, and follow the various...
.
| All time highest attendance records at the MCG | |||
| Number | Attendance | Event | Date |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 130,000 | Billy Graham Billy Graham William Franklin "Billy" Graham, Jr. is an American evangelical Christian evangelist. As of April 25, 2010, when he met with Barack Obama, Graham has spent personal time with twelve United States Presidents dating back to Harry S. Truman, and is number seven on Gallup's list of admired people for... Crusade |
15 March 1959 |
| 2 | 121,696 | VFL Grand Final 1970 VFL Grand Final The 1970 VFL Grand Final was an Australian rules football game contested between the Carlton Football Club and Collingwood Football Club, held at the Melbourne Cricket Ground in Melbourne on 26 September 1970. It was the 74th annual Grand Final of the Victorian Football League, staged to determine... v |
26 September 1970 |
| 3 | 120,000 | 40th Eucharistic Congress | 25 February 1973 |
| 4 | 119,195 | VFL Grand Final 1969 VFL Grand Final The 1969 VFL Grand Final was an Australian rules football game contested between the Carlton Football Club and Richmond Football Club, held at the Melbourne Cricket Ground in Melbourne on 27 September 1969. It was the 73rd annual Grand Final of the Victorian Football League, staged to determine... v |
27 September 1969 |
| 5 | 118,192 | VFL Grand Final 1971 VFL Grand Final The 1971 VFL Grand Final was an Australian rules football game contested between the Hawthorn Football Club and St Kilda Football Club, held at the Melbourne Cricket Ground in Melbourne on 25 September 1971. It was the 75th annual Grand Final of the Victorian Football League, staged to determine... v |
25 September 1971 |
Sporting records
- First ever Test Cricket match (Australia v England) – 1877
- First ever One day international Cricket match – 1971
- Highest first class cricket score – 1107 (Victoria v NSW, 1926)
- Australia's first international Lacrosse match (Australia v Canada, 1907, 30,000)
- Fastest ball bowled in a Cricket match in Australia, 3rd fastest in the world – 160.7 km/h (Shaun Tait, Australia v Pakistan, 5 February 2010)
Attendance records
- Highest VFL/AFL attendance – 121,696 (Collingwood v Carlton, 1970)
- Highest soccer crowd in Australia – 107,000 (1956 Olympics Soccer Final)
- Highest Australian soccer crowd – 95,103 (Australia v Greece, 2006)
- Highest single-day attendance in the history of Test Cricket – 90,800 in 1961 (Australia v West Indies)
- Highest One Day International crowd – 87,182 (1992 World Cup Final England v Pakistan)
- Highest Australian religious event attendance – 130,000–140,000 (Billy Graham crusade, 1959)
- The first stadium in the world to have its annual number of visitors equal to the city's population
Stadium records
- World's first all colour cricket scoreboard with instant replays
- World's first electronic sightscreens
- World's first super sopper
- World's first scrolling signage at an oval-shaped ground
- First time an international Cricket match was played on a one-piece portable pitch, Boxing Day TestBoxing Day TestThe Boxing Day Test match is a cricket Test match hosted in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia involving the Australian cricket team and an opposing national team which is touring Australia that summer. It begins annually on Boxing Day and is played at the Melbourne Cricket Ground...
, 2000 - World's highest light towers
Test Records
- Highest Test Total: 604 – AustraliaAustralian cricket teamThe Australian cricket team is the national cricket team of Australia. It is the joint oldest team in Test cricket, having played in the first Test match in 1877...
vs. England, 26 February 1937 - Highest Individual Test Score: 307 – Bob CowperBob CowperRobert Maskew Cowper was an Australian Test match cricketer in the 1960s, who also played for Victorian and Western Australia....
, Australia vs. England, 11 February 1966 - Best Test Innings Bowling Figures: 9/86 – Sarfraz NawazSarfraz NawazSarfraz Nawaz Malik is a former Pakistani Test cricketer and politician who discovered reverse swing and was instrumental in Pakistan's first Test series victories over India and England. Between 1969 and 1984 he played 55 Tests and 45 One Day Internationals and was Imran Khan's regular new ball...
, Pakistan vs. Australia, 10 March 1979 - Best Test Match Bowling Figures: 15/124 – Wilfred RhodesWilfred RhodesWilfred Rhodes was an English professional cricketer who played 58 Test matches for England between 1899 and 1930. In Tests, Rhodes took 127 wickets in and scored 2,325 runs, becoming the first Englishman to complete the double of 1,000 runs and 100 wickets in Test matches...
, England vs. Australia, 1 January 1904 - Highest Test Partnership: 346 (for the 6th wicket) – Sir Donald Bradman & Jack FingletonJack FingletonJohn "Jack" Henry Webb Fingleton OBE was an Australian cricketer who was trained as a journalist and became a political and cricket commentator after the end of his playing career...
, Australia vs. England, 1 January 1937
ODI Records
- Highest ODI Total: 8/344 – ICC World XI vs. ACC Asian XI, World Cricket Tsunami AppealWorld Cricket Tsunami AppealThe World Cricket Tsunami Appeal was an effort by the International Cricket Council to raise funds to support the humanitarian relief efforts following the Indian Ocean tsunami of 26 December 2004. It was scheduled to be held over two games but was reduced to one due to an over-crowded...
, 10 January 2005 - Highest Individual ODI Score: 173 – Mark WaughMark WaughMark Edward Waugh AM is a former Australian cricketer, who represented Australia in Test matches from early 1991 to late 2002, and made his One-Day International debut in 1988. Waugh is regarded as one of the most elegant and gifted stroke makers to ever play the game. His nickname is "Junior" as...
, Australia vs. West Indies, 9 February 2001 - Best ODI Innings Bowling Figures: 6/42 – Ajit AgarkarAjit AgarkarAjit Bhalchandra Agarkar is an Indian international cricketer, who has been on the fringes of the Indian side in both tests and one day matches since his debut in 1998...
, India vs. Australia, 9 January 2004 - Highest ODI Partnership: 225 (for the 2nd wicket) – Adam GilchristAdam GilchristAdam Craig Gilchrist AM , nicknamed "Gilly" or "Churchy", is an Australian international cricketer who currently captains Kings XI Punjab and recently captained Middlesex. He is an attacking left-handed batsman and record-breaking wicket-keeper, who redefined the role for the Australian national...
& Ricky PontingRicky PontingRicky Thomas Ponting , nicknamed Punter, is an Australian cricketer, a former captain of the Australian cricket team between 2004 and 2011 in Test cricket and 2002 and 2011 in One Day International cricket. He is a specialist right-handed batsman, slips and close catching fielder, as well as a very...
, Australia vs. England, 15 December 2002
Twenty20 International Records
- Highest Twenty20 Total: 9/182 – Australia vs. South Africa, 11 January 2009
- Highest Individual Twenty20 Score: 89 (43) – David WarnerDavid Warner (cricketer)David Andrew Warner is an Australian cricketer. A quick-scoring left-handed opening batsman, Warner is the first Australian cricketer in 132 years to be selected for a national team in any format without experience in first-class cricket...
, Australia vs. South Africa, 11 January 2009 - Best Twenty20 Innings Bowling Figures: 3/11 – Nathan BrackenNathan BrackenNathan Wade Bracken is a former Australian cricketer. A tall left-arm fast-medium bowler, Bracken is capable of swinging the ball both ways. He has represented Australia in all forms of the game...
, Australia vs. India, 1 February 2008 - Highest Twenty20 Partnership: 60 (for the 1st wicket) – Ian Bell & Steven DaviesSteven DaviesSteven Michael Davies is an English cricketer, a wicket-keeper-batsman who currently plays for Surrey. A stylish and aggressive left-handed batsman who can open the batting in both first-class and limited-overs cricket...
, England vs. Australia, 14 January 2011
Parade of Champions
Tattersall's (gambling organisation)
Tatts Group Limited , formerly Tattersall's Limited, is a Victorian lottery/gaming company. Tattersall's is licensed to sell lottery related products including Tattslotto, Super 66, Monday & Wednesday Lotto, Super 7's Oz Lotto, The Pools, and Powerball in the Australian states of Tasmania and...
and known as the Parade of Champions, including many Australian rules football and cricket legends.
They include:
- Ron BarassiRon BarassiRonald Dale Barassi, Jr AM is a former Australian rules football player and coach. During a long and decorated career, Barassi has been one of the most important figures in the history of Australian football. His father, Ron Barassi, Sr., was the first Australian footballer killed at Tobruk during...
(Australian rules football player) - Dick ReynoldsDick ReynoldsRichard Sylvannus 'Dick' Reynolds was an Australian rules footballer and coach who represented Essendon and Victoria with great distinction....
(Australian rules football player) - Leigh MatthewsLeigh MatthewsLeigh Raymond "Lethal Leigh" Matthews AM is a former player and coach of Australian rules football. He played for Hawthorn in the Victorian Football League from 1969 to 1985, coached Collingwood from 1986–1995, and coached the Brisbane Lions from 1999 to 2008...
(Australian rules football player) - Haydn Bunton, Sr.Haydn Bunton, Sr.Haydn William Bunton was an Australian rules football player and coach. He is regarded by some historians and observers of Australian rules as its greatest-ever player.-Playing career:...
(Australian rules football player) - Don BradmanDonald BradmanSir Donald George Bradman, AC , often referred to as "The Don", was an Australian cricketer, widely acknowledged as the greatest batsman of all time...
(cricket player) - Keith MillerKeith MillerKeith Ross Miller MBE was an Australian Test cricketer and a Royal Australian Air Force pilot during World War II. Miller is widely regarded as Australia's greatest ever all-rounder. Because of his ability, irreverent manner and good looks he was a crowd favourite...
(cricket player) - Bill PonsfordBill PonsfordWilliam Harold "Bill" Ponsford MBE was an Australian cricketer. Usually playing as an opening batsman, he formed a successful and long-lived partnership opening the batting for Victoria and Australia with Bill Woodfull, his friend and state and national captain...
(cricket player) - Dennis LilleeDennis LilleeDennis Keith Lillee, AM, MBE is a former Australian cricketer rated as the "outstanding fast bowler of his generation"...
(cricket player) - Betty CuthbertBetty CuthbertElizabeth Cuthbert AM, MBE is an Australian athlete, and a fourfold Olympic champion....
(track and field) - Shirley StricklandShirley StricklandShirley Barbara Strickland AO, MBE , later Shirley de la Hunty, was an Australian athlete. She won more Olympic medals than any other Australian in running sports.-Family:...
(track and field)
There is also a statue depicting the first game of Australian rules football and the nearby Punt Road Oval
Punt Road Oval
Punt Road Oval is a sporting ground located in Yarra Park, East Melbourne, Victoria situated only a few hundred metres to the east of the famous Melbourne Cricket Ground....
has a statue of Jack Dyer
Jack Dyer
John Raymond Dyer Sr. OAM , always known as Jack Dyer, was one of the colossal figures of Australian rules football during two distinct careers, firstly as a player and coach of the Richmond Football Club in the Victorian Football League between 1931 and 1952, and later in the broadcast media for...
.
See also
- Australian landmarks
- History of Test cricket (to 1883)History of Test cricket (to 1883)Test matches in the period 1877 to 1883 were organised somewhat differently from international cricket matches today. The teams were rarely representative, and the boat trip between Australia and England, which usually lasted about 48 days, was one that many cricketers were unable or unwilling to...
- History of Test cricket (1884 to 1889)History of Test cricket (1884 to 1889)The history of Test cricket between 1884 and 1889 was one of English dominance over the Australians. England won every Test series that was played. The period also saw the first use of the word "Test" to describe a form of cricket when the Press used it in 1885...
- History of Test cricket (1890 to 1900)History of Test cricket (1890 to 1900)Test matches in the 19th century were somewhat different affairs than what they are today. Many of them were not designated as Test matches for many years afterwards, and it is possible that some Test players never knew they had played in a Test. Before 1888 there had been 26 Test matches, all...
- List of Test cricket grounds
- List of international cricket centuries at the Melbourne Cricket Ground
- National Sports MuseumNational Sports MuseumThe National Sports Museum is a museum dedicated to Australian sport and is located within the Melbourne Cricket Ground in Melbourne, Australia. It features exhibitions and galleries of items related mainly to Australian Rules Football, Cricket, the Summer and Winter Olympic Games, the Sport...
, a museum dedicated to Australian sport, located within the Melbourne Cricket Ground
Further reading
- Cashman, Richard (1995) Paradise of Sport Melbourne: Oxford University Press
- Cuthbert, Betty (1966) Golden Girl
- Gordon, Harry (1994) Australia and the Olympic Games Brisbane: University of Queensland Press
- Hinds, Richard (1997) Low blows. Sport’s top 10 The Sydney Morning HeraldThe Sydney Morning HeraldThe Sydney Morning Herald is a daily broadsheet newspaper published by Fairfax Media in Sydney, Australia. Founded in 1831 as the Sydney Herald, the SMH is the oldest continuously published newspaper in Australia. The newspaper is published six days a week. The newspaper's Sunday counterpart, The...
1 November - Linnell, Garry (1995) Football Ltd Sydney: Ironbark Pan Macmillan Australia
- Pollard, Jack (1990) Australia Test Match Grounds London: Willow Books
- Plan of the Town and Suburbs of Melbourne 1843
- Vamplew, Wray; Moore, Katharine; O’Hara, John; Cashman, Richard; and Jobling, Ian [editors] (1997) The Oxford Companion to Australian Sport Second Edition Melbourne: Oxford University Press