Sydney Cricket Ground
Encyclopedia
The Sydney Cricket Ground (SCG) 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 Football League
. It is owned and operated by the SCG Trust that also manages the Sydney Football Stadium located next door.
In 1811, the Governor of New South Wales, Lachlan Macquarie
, established the second Sydney Common, about one-and-a-half miles wide and extending south from South Head Rd (now Oxford St) to where Randwick Racecourse
is today. Part sandhills, part swamp and situated on the south-eastern fringe of the city, it was used as a rubbish dump in the 1850s and not regarded as an ideal place for sport. In 1851, part of the Sydney Common south of Victoria Barracks
was granted to the British Army
for use as a garden and cricket
ground for the soldiers. Its first user was the 11th North Devonshire Regiment which flattened and graded the southern part of the rifle range adjacent to the Barracks.
In the next couple of years, the teams from Victoria Barracks combined themselves into a more permanent organisation and called themselves the Garrison Club. The ground therefore became known as the Garrison Ground when it was first opened in February 1854.
Up until that time Hyde Park
had been the main sporting and racing ground in the colony but when it was dedicated as public gardens in 1856 city cricketers and footballers had to find somewhere else to play.
In the late 1860s another part of the Sydney Common, the area west of the Garrison Ground to the then Dowling Street, was opened for public recreation. It was named Moore Park
after the Mayor of Sydney, Charles Moore, who planted a number of Moreton Bay Fig
trees which exist to this day. As well as the location of Sydney's first zoo
, Moore Park was a regular venue for games between Sydney rugby clubs Sydney University and the Wallaroos. Sydney at the time was a small, dense city and best navigated on foot and Moore Park was on the outskirts. It was not liked so much by cricketers because it was too far from the city.
When the commander of the Sydney garrison, Lieutenant-Colonel John Richardson, aligned his soldiers to the East Sydney Cricket Club, the Garrison Ground became known as the Civil and Military Ground. In 1870 British troops left Victoria barracks and the future of the Civil and Military Ground became uncertain. However, with the closure of the Albert Ground in the 1870s, the NSW Cricket Association
(NSWCA) began regular use of the Civil and Military Ground.
In 1875 the NSW Government began to upgrade the ground. Despite efforts by Victoria Barracks and then the Carlingford, Redfern, Fitzroy and Albert cricket clubs to take control, the then president of the NSWCA, Richard Driver
(after whom Driver Avenue outside the ground is named), persuaded the government to let the NSWCA look after the ground's administration. In 1876, the ground was dedicated by Governor Sir Hercules Robinson.
The NSWCA had influential supporters. Driver himself was a prominent MP and solicitor for the City of Sydney Council
. The Minister for Lands, Thomas Garrett, was also supportive; his son was about to break into the colonial side. It is hardly surprising therefore that within a couple of years of the NSWCA taking control of the ground, the governor, Sir Hercules Robinson, appointed Driver himself, William W. Stephen and Phillip Sheridan (after whom a grandstand was named), the first trustees. Two trustees were appointed by the government and one by the NSWCA. The close relationship between the Trust and the NSWCA is evidenced by the fact that they pooled funds for the next six years. The military's link with the ground was finally severed when John Richardson and the Sydney garrison went to fight in the Sudan
. The trustees then took the opportunity to rename the ground the Association Ground
In 1883 the most prominent trustee, Sheridan, regarding the ground as the responsibility of the trustees, began to act independently of the NSWCA, resulting in the NSWCA losing control of the ground. Over the next century there was constant conflict between the Trust and the NSWCA over whether other sports such as rugby
, tennis
and cycling
, the organisers of which were all keen to use the venue, had access to it. One conflict in 1904, over the Trust's plan to hold a cycling event which clashed with a cricket match, ended up in court. The NSWCA's influence was eventually reduced even further over the years due to changes in the way the State Government appointed trustees.
By the time of the first Sydney cricket test
in February 1882, the ground could boast two grandstands; the Brewongle Stand at the southern end and the original Members' Stand, which had been built in 1878 in the north west corner where the current Members' Stand now sits. On opposite sides of the ground to the stands two spectator mounds were built. They became known as The Hill and the Paddington Hill.
In 1886, the Members' Pavilion was rebuilt at a cost of £6625. Membership was levied at two guineas.
Between 1888 and 1890 a loop in the tram line, which ran down Randwick Road (now Anzac Parade
), was built to service the Ground and the Pastoral and Agricultural Society Ground (later the RAS Showgrounds and now Fox Studios) next door.
In 1894 the ground finally received its modern name, the Sydney Cricket Ground, which was followed by the opening of the Hill Stand, situated between The Hill and the Paddington Hill. It became known as the Bob Stand during the Depression years because it cost one shilling (a bob) to enter.
The first SCG scoreboard
was built in the two weeks leading up to the 1895-1896 inter-colonial match between New South Wales and Victoria
. Although it was Sheridan's idea, the design was Ned Gregory's who believed that English scoreboards were inadequate. Requiring two men to operate it, the new scoreboard was hailed as one of the wonders of the cricket world. Boards with players' names on them were placed in different slits alongside scrolls of canvas with numbers painted on them which were rolled up and down to show the changing score. Under the scoreboard was a refreshment stall which sold, among other things, oysters.
In 1896 the Ladies' Stand was opened, along with a concrete cycling track which circled the inside of the ground. One of the carpenters who built the formwork for the track was George Bradman, father of Don Bradman. In 1898 floodlights were built over the cycling track so that night events could be held. In 1904 the scoreboard was rebuilt at the top of The Hill and in 1909 the Sheridan Stand, named after Phil Sheridan, was opened at the southern end, replacing the earlier Smokers' Stand.
In the period up to World War I
the SCG was used for a wide variety of sports including athletics
, tennis
, baseball
, football and cycling. The cycling track however was removed in 1920. In 1924 Ned Gregory's scoreboard was closed and the concrete scoreboard at the back of the Hill opened.
During the 1920s and 1930s crowds packed into the SCG to see Don Bradman play for New South Wales and Australia. Many of the huge gate takings that Bradman brought in for the NSWCA were spent on developing the ground. A large new stand was built at the northern end in two stages. It replaced the Northern Stand and was intended to also replace the Members' and Ladies' Stands. The first stage, begun while Bradman was still playing for New South Wales, was opened in 1936 at a cost of £90,000 and named the ‘M.A. Noble Stand' after the great Australian captain Monty Noble
. The second stage, completed in 1973 at a cost of $2 million, was named the Bradman Stand after the great man himself.
Further redevelopment of the ground began in 1978 with the advent of World Series Cricket
and games played at night. When media giant Kerry Packer
failed to obtain the television broadcast rights for cricket, he bought the top 30-40 players in the world and staged his own competition, World Series Cricket (WSC).
Packer applied to use the SCG for WSC in 1977 but the SCG Trust, which administered the ground, refused. To please the powerful Packer, the NSW Labor Government under Premier Neville Wran
, simply amended the Sydney Sports Ground and Cricket Ground Act. This removed the Trust's power to decide who played at the SCG and the NSWCA's traditional right over the ground. A new Trust was established with 12 members appointed by the Government and two elected by SCG members. The new Trust had no WSC opponents, and although legal action by the NSWCA stopped WSC games being played at the SCG in 1977, they were played there in 1978.
In the years since WSC the character of the SCG has somewhat changed. Six light towers were built in 1978 at a cost of $1.2 million so that cricket could be played at night, and two huge new stands were constructed at the southern end of the ground. The new Brewongle Stand was built on the site of the old Brewongle Stand at a cost $8.9 million and opened in 1980. The Churchill Stand, named after rugby league legend Clive Churchill
, replaced the Sheridan Stand at a cost of $8.2 million and was opened in 1986.
The old concrete scoreboard was closed in 1983 and a new electronic board erected above The Hill. This board allowed the crowd to see video replays and provided more scope for advertising.
The Bob Stand has also gone, to North Sydney Oval
, replaced by the Bill O'Reilly
Stand. This stand was originally named the Pat Hills Stand, after the NSW Labor Government Minister and SCG Trust member, when it was opened in 1984. However, the incoming State Liberal Government changed the name to the more appropriate O'Reilly Stand after the legendary spin bowler.
The Hill also has gone but the reason for that is a little harder to pin. Up until the 1990s the Hill was a grassy slope without seating. It was the 'outer ground' costing the least to get in and attracting working class
patronage. The invention of the beer can and the portable cooler
in the 1960s increased alcohol consumption at cricket matches which in turn fuelled bad crowd behaviour. In the 1970s the advent of limited overs games held partially at night attracted a different kind of crowd to cricket at the SCG. They were less interested in the subtleties of the game and more in the excitement and spectacle. Brawling and excessive drinking were features of the crowd on the Hill at this time. Even the introduction of individual seating on the Hill failed to completely eradicate crowd misbehaviour. Stricter measures such as banning alcohol were later implemented with greater success.
Further developments have taken place in more recent years with the internal reconstruction of the M.A. Noble stand completed in 1994 and the opening of the NSW Cricket Centre in 1997. This facility includes indoor training wickets and administrative offices for Cricket NSW (formerly NSW Cricket Association). In 1999 the original electronic scoreboard was replaced by a new higher-definition video screen. In the 21st Century the Hill has been completely redeveloped with a new 12,000 seat Victor Trumper
Stand, completed in 2008. This stand brings the SCG's capacity to 46,000 spectators.
The SCG Trust has announced the MA Noble, Bradman and Dally Messenger Stands will be demolished and rebuilt before the 2015 Cricket World Cup, it will increase ground capacity to 48,000 spectators. Finally after the 2015 Cricket World Cup, the Trust is keen to redevelop the Bill O'Reilly stand, further increasing the grounds capacity. The ground will be a near complete modern "bowl" stadium with the exception of the two heritage listed Members and Ladies stands.
The first statue commissioned was of bowler Richie Benaud
and was unveiled on 4 January 2008 by Benaud himself. Rugby League player Dally Messenger
was the next recipient of a statue which was unveiled on 20 March 2008 outside of the SFS. A statue of the fast bowler Fred Spofforth
was unveiled a year after the first statue on 5 January 2009. Rugby Union and Rugby League player Trevor Allan
was the next to be unveiled on 5 June 2009 followed by the Australian Rules Football player Paul Roos
on 29 August 2009. The next cricketer to be immortalised was batsman Stan McCabe
unveiled on 5 January 2010. In 2010 a bronze statue of Reg Gasnier
was unveiled as the seventh inside the SCG precinct as part of the Basil Sellers
Sports Sculpture project.
Aside from the statues honouring sporting champions a statue of famous spectator Yabba
was unveiled on 7 December 2009. He is the only statue placed inside the grounds taking over two seats on the concourse in front of the new Victor Trumper stand.
, the Garrison Ground was used for practice by the NSW cricket team in 1860 and by the Victorian team in 1861 the before inter-colonial matches in those years.
Cricket was first played in Australia in Sydney's Hyde Park in 1803. However, up until the appointment of trustees to look after the SCG in the late 1870s, several different grounds had been used for major matches. The Domain was first used for inter-colonial games and then the Albert Ground in Redfern but in time both became unavailable, the Domain because of its poor condition and because it could not be fenced in and the Albert Ground because it closed in the late 1870s.
After the closure of the Albert Ground the New South Wales Cricket Association began using the Association Ground. The first major game played there was the final of the Civil Service Challenge Cup on 25 October 1877, between the New South Wales Government Printing Office and the Audit Office, and the first first-class match was the inter-colonial game, New South Wales against Victoria, in February 1878.
During the 1878-79 season Lord Harris' England team toured Australia. The feature of the tourists game against New South Wales at the SCG in 1879 was a riot sparked apparently when the crowd disagreed with an umpiring decision by George Coulthard
that went against the locals. Lord Harris believed the invasion of the ground by about 2000 spectators was actually started by bookmakers in the stand. One of the umpires for the match was Edmund Barton
, later to become Australia's first Prime Minister.
By the time the first test was played at the SCG between 17 February and 21 February 1882 the ground was in fine condition. The NSWCA had appointed Ned Gregory as curator and given him a cottage next to the ground for him and his family. Australia won that game by overhauling England's scores of 133 and 232 with scores of 197 and 5 for 169.
Don Bradman made his first visit to the ground in the 1920-21 season to watch the Fifth Test of the Australia and England series. In that game Charlie Macartney scored 170 to help seal a win for Australia.
Bradman scored the highest ever first-class innings of 452 at the SCG for New South Wales against Queensland in 1928-29. This record was surpassed by Hanif Mohammad
who scored 499 run out. It was further bettered by the West Indian Brian Lara
who scored 501 in 1994.
The 1928-29 season was a big one for cricket. On 15 December, the largest ever crowd to attend a cricket match at the SCG, 58,446, saw Australia and England play. With changes to the ground seating the record is unlikely to be beaten.
In the last test of the 1970-71 English tour, England fast bowler John Snow
struck Australian spinner and tailender Terry Jenner
on the head with a bouncer
. The Sydney crowd let Snow and the English know they were not happy with his behaviour and when Snow took up his fielding position on the fence a spectator spoke to him and grabbed him by the shirt. Cans were thrown onto the field and England captain Ray Illingworth
took his team from the ground.
The first women's club cricket match was held at the SCG in 1886 when the Fernleas played the Siroccos. Although cricket was not seen as an appropriate game for women, women's cricket associations were formed in Victoria in 1905 and other states in the 1920s and 1930s.
Night cricket came to the SCG in 1978 with the first World Series Cricket match to be played at the SCG on 28 November that year. A crowd of 50,000 packed the ground.
.
Before the Sydney Football Stadium was built the New South Wales Rugby Football League premiership grand final was always played at the SCG. The ground was first used by the NSWRFL in 1913, and has hosted over 1,100 first grade games - more than any other ground. The SCG is often used for special rugby league heritage matches, both NRL and Internationals matches. When the ground was first used for rugby league fixtures in 1913, the Trust only gave players access to dressing sheds in the Sheridan Stand and did not allow use of the rooms in the Member's Stand. This rule was relaxed in 1918.
In 1920 England toured for the first time since World War I and huge crowds attended their games. The first match of the tour was at the SCG against Metropolis in front of nearly 68,000 spectators. Australia won the first Test in Brisbane and in the second Test at the SCG on 3 July the Australians sealed the series scoring five tries to win 21-8 and secure the Rugby League Ashes
for the first time at home.
The attendance record for a rugby league match in Australia was broken in 1932 when 70,204 people saw Australia play England at the Sydney Cricket Ground. It was the first Test and it was in this game that the Australians first wore the green jersey with a double gold ‘V', which they have been wearing ever since. The British side boasted one of the great rugby league backlines with Sullivan, Smith, Ellaby
, Brogden and Atkinson. The gates of the SCG had to be closed to prevent another 15,000 from entering. Australia lost the game 8-6. The second game was the famous ‘Battle of Brisbane' Test, which Australia won. In the third Test back at the SCG Australia lead 11-3 until late in the game. Incredibly, GB scored three quick tries to snatch the game (18-13) and the series.
The next tour by GB was in 1946 , The "Indomitables" tour. The first test played on the 17th June was an 8 - 8 draw , the opening try of the series was scored by the legendary Frank Whitcombe
for the tourists, in front of a crowd of 64,527. Great Britain went on to win the Ashe's. In 1950 Australia had not won a series against the team GB for 30 years but this time there was a big change. Britain had won the first Test and Australia the second, which made the third SCG Test the decider. Unfortunately, the tour coincided with a record amount of rain and by the time the teams arrived the SCG was a mud heap. Forty tonnes of soil were brought in and spread over the surface to try and dry it out. Tied 2-2 at half time, Australia scored the only try of the match late in the second half when winger Ron Roberts crossed in the corner to seal the win. At the end of the game the crowd of over 47,000 jumped the fence and invaded the field.
On 18 September 1965, the largest ever crowd at the SCG, 78,056, saw St George
beat South Sydney 12-8 in the NSWRFL grand final. This was also the largest rugby league crowd in Australia until 1994. The ground also hosted the 1968 Rugby League World Cup
final.
One of the most courageous efforts at the SCG was John Sattler
's performance in the 1970 grand final between South Sydney and Manly-Warringah
. In the first ten minutes of the game South's captain Sattler had his jaw broken by a punch from a Manly forward. Sattler went down but pulled himself up on team mate Mike Cleary asking Cleary to help him so that the other players would not know he was hurt. In an act of supreme courage Sattler played on, refusing treatment at half time, to lead Souths to a 23-12 win. It was not until well after the game that he went to hospital. The Australian side to tour Britain was selected that night and, but for his injury, Sattler would have been picked as captain.
In 1975, in one of the most memorable grand finals ever, the local rugby league club team, the Eastern Suburbs Roosters
, defeated the St George Dragons 38-0 to win the premiership. The Eastern Suburbs team is considered one of the best sides ever assembled and the eight tries to nil scoreline remained a record winning margin in a grand final until the 2008 Manly Warringah Sea Eagles vs Melbourne Storm grand final, where Manly won 40-0. However, the game was famous for reasons other than the scoreline. St George's Graeme Langlands
played with a misdirected painkiller that prevented him from playing anywhere near his best. Easts were without two of their stars: Mark Harris and Russell Fairfax
, and coach Jack Gibson
gambled on an unknown player to help fill the void - John Rheinberger
- who played in his first and last game in first grade in the 1975 grand final. Leading by only 5-0 at half-time, the Roosters scored an avalanche of tries after the interval to humiliate the Dragons. Earlier in the same season, the Jack Gibson coached Roosters recorded the longest winning streak of any first grade rugby league club - 19 matches. It was the Eastern Suburbs Roosters' eleventh premiership victory and their second in succession.
In 1981, another memorable and emotional rugby league grand final was played at the SCG. Since joining the Sydney Premiership in 1947 the Parramatta
club had not won a grand final. In 1976 and 1977 it had suffered consecutive losses, first to Manly and then St George in the first replayed grand final. In 1981, the Eels 'dream team', comprising internationals Ray Price, Mick Cronin
, Peter Sterling
, Brett Kenny
, Steve Ella
and Eric Grothe
outscored Newtown
four tries to three to win 20-11 and secure their first premiership. Financial pressures at the Newtown club would result in the Jets competing in the New South Wales Rugby League first grade competition for only two seasons following their 1981 grand final appearance.
The ground lost the Grand Final and numerous games to the Sydney Football Stadium in 1988. Even so the ground continues to host occasional National Rugby League
matches. and the 2008 ANZAC Test
against New Zealand
.
in 1875 and by the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club
in 1877 when it held its first tournament at Wimbledon
.
Tennis was regularly played at the SCG in the early days. The Sydney tournament which was to become the New South Wales Open, was first played at the SCG in 1885 before moving to the NSW Lawn Tennis Club's courts at Double Bay, then to White City
and later to the Olympic Tennis Centre
at Homebush Bay.
. On the evening of 1 January 1901, these seven machines raced around the concrete cycle track which ringed the inside of the SCG in those days to compete in Australia's first ever motor race.
which were tied into the State's sesqi-centenary celebrations. Perhaps because of this the Federal Government provided no money and only £10,000 came from the State Government to cover the organising committee's administrative costs. The budget was therefore, very tight and using the existing SCG was one way of making ends meet. Cyclist Edgar "Dunc" Gray led the teams onto the ground and athletes ran on a makeshift grass track.
28-4. From June 1911 the NSW Rugby League
had exclusive use of the SCG, as well as the Sydney Sports Ground
and the Sydney Showground
, preventing rugby union games from being played there. Over the years the SCG hosted 71 rugby union tests before Sydney international matches were moved first to Waratah Rugby Park (Concord Oval), then the Sydney Football Stadium and later Stadium Australia. The largest ever crowd to watch a rugby union match at the SCG was 49,327 who saw NSW played New Zealand
on 13 July 1907.
Of those 71 tests none could have been more dramatic than the game against the South African Springboks on 7 August 1971. Marred by anti-apartheid protests, field invasions and objects being thrown onto the ground and halted several times to removed golf balls and protestors it was won by South Africa who went through the tour undefeated.
The SCG has been both a happy and unhappy hunting ground for Australian rugby union. One of the worst incidents to occur there was the sad demise of Ken Catchpole's international career. Robbed of a glorious retirement, his career ended in a disgraceful scandal. Australia was playing the New Zealand All Blacks and while Catchpole was trapped on the bottom of a ruck New Zealander second rower, Colin Meads, tried to drag him out by one leg, splitting him like a wishbone. Australia, although well beaten on this occasion, was well served by international-standard halfbacks and 20-year-old John Hipwell ran on for his first test as Catchpole was carried off. It was a sad end to an illustrious career.
Dramatic though that game was, no test could have been as important in the development of Australian Rugby Union
than the game against the touring Welsh
team in 1978.
The 1978 Welsh had arrived in Australia as (the then) Five Nations Champions, Triple Crown
winners, the best rugby union team in the world but they were a sad and sorry bunch by the time they got to Sydney for the last game of the tour, the second test. The team was decimated by injuries and in two earlier tour games had suffered a last minute loss to Sydney and a humiliating defeat midweek to the Australian Capital Territory
.
Rumours abounded that the Welsh were ready for a big 'get square' with Australian prop Steve Finnane, the so-called 'enforcer' of the Australian team. Finnane and other senior members of the team had vowed to avenge the defeat of the Australians by the Welsh on their last tour of the UK several years before. The SCG crowd didn't have long to wait because after the very first scrum Welsh prop Graham Price
came out holding his bloodied jaw, the victim of a Finnane punch. Price had bored in on Finnane, his opposite number in the front row and Finnane reacted.
After Price left the field and the game continued for a short while until the Welsh, using a pre-determined code word, sparked an all-in-brawl. Wales lost the test and the two-test series.
In 1979 there was a one-off game against the All Blacks
at the SCG. The kicking of a young five-eighth named Tony Melrose closed out the New Zealanders and Australia won a try-less game 12-6, to take back the Bledisloe Cup
for the first time since 1949. The following year the Australians showed it was no fluke by beating New Zealand two tests to one in Australia to successfully defend the trophy for the first time.
Although rugby had first been played at the Civil and Military Ground in the 1870s, the first inter-colonial football match to be played there was Australian Rules football
on 6 August 1881 between NSW and Victoria.
Essendon
and Melbourne
played a premiership match at Moore Park in 1904 in front of the Governor General and Governor of NSW. Melbourne won and both teams had to return home by boat down the coast.
In the subsequent decades the ground was rarely used for Australian Rules except for the occasional exhibition match or interstate football carnival.
Australian Rules was not to make regular come back to the SCG for another hundred years when in 1982 the South Melbourne Club
relocated to Sydney to make the SCG its home ground.
South Melbourne was formed in 1867, a foundation member of the first Australian rules competition the Victorian Football Association (VFA) and also its later replacement the Victorian Football League
(VFL). The club won five premierships with the VFA up to 1890 and four more in the VFL in the first half of the 20th Century. Lack of success in the post-war years left them ripe for relocation when the game's administrators were looking to expand the competition into other states. In 1982 South Melbourne moved to Sydney and the SCG to become the Sydney Swans.
Despite their shaky financial situation the Swans were the flavour of Sydney in the early years. Attendances rose and Swans matches at the SCG were the place to be seen, rivaling Sydney's main winter sport, rugby league. In the late 1980s Sydney Rules Ltd, the company which ran the licence for the club, recorded a profit of $600,000. However, when the stock market crashed in October 1987, the Swans went with it. The Swans managed to hold on and eventually gained a firmer foothold in Sydney.
Perhaps the Swans' greatest moment at the SCG was the 1996 preliminary final. With only minutes to go and level with opponents Essendon in front of a sell-out crowd, ageing full forward Tony Lockett
put through a behind from 50 m to give them a one point win and their first grand final berth in decades. The Sydney crowds flocked to see the Swans when they were winning and were strengthened by Rugby League being at its lowest point during split ARL
and Super League
competitions in 1997. On 30 August 1997, the largest ever crowd to watch an Australian Rules game at the SCG, 46,168, came to see the Swans play Geelong
- a far cry from the 5,272 that turned up to a game against the Brisbane Bears
just 7 years before - but the match was lost to Geelong by 10 points. In 1999, the SCG witnessed its only modern-day pitch invasion
when legendary full-forward Tony Lockett
kicked the record-breaking 1300th goal against Collingwood in round 10.
The SCG is the shortest field that is used for AFL games, at 153 metres long. However, Geelong's Skilled Stadium is narrower.
, putting the stone
and other traditional Highland sports as well as Highland dancing. A crowd of 5000 attended. On 5 May 1964, 51,566 soccer fans came to the SCG to see NSW take on English club Everton F.C.
. For the first time in the history of the A-League
, the SCG will hold a match between Sydney FC
and North Queensland Fury, as the Sydney Football Stadium next door is holding a Rugby League
match.
The live DVD of the Girlie Show Tour by Madonna
, was recorded at the stadium in 1993.
U.S punk rock band Green Day
performed two shows of their American Idiot World Tour at the stadium in December 2005
Charity concert Wave Aid was held in early 2005, to raise money for the 2004 Asian Tsunami relief.
The Sound Relief concert was held on 14 March 2009.
The SCG is also mentioned in the song "Test Match Special", by the Duckworth Lewis Method.
Stadium
A modern stadium is a place or venue for outdoor sports, concerts, or other events and consists of a field or stage either partly or completely surrounded by a structure designed to allow spectators to stand or sit and view the event.)Pausanias noted that for about half a century the only event...
in Sydney
Sydney
Sydney is the most populous city in Australia and the state capital of New South Wales. Sydney is located on Australia's south-east coast of the Tasman Sea. As of June 2010, the greater metropolitan area had an approximate population of 4.6 million people...
in Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
. It is used for Australian 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...
, Test cricket
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...
, One Day International cricket, some 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...
and 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...
matches and is the home ground for the New South Wales Blues
New South Wales Blues
The New South Wales cricket team are an Australian first class cricket team based in Sydney, New South Wales...
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...
team and the Sydney Swans
Sydney Swans
The Sydney Swans Football Club is an Australian rules football club which plays in the Australian Football League . The club is based in Sydney, New South Wales. The club, founded in 1874, was known as the South Melbourne Football Club until it relocated to Sydney in 1982 to become the Sydney...
of 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...
. It is owned and operated by the SCG Trust that also manages the Sydney Football Stadium located next door.
History
Lachlan Macquarie
Major-General Lachlan Macquarie CB , was a British military officer and colonial administrator. He served as the last autocratic Governor of New South Wales, Australia from 1810 to 1821 and had a leading role in the social, economic and architectural development of the colony...
, established the second Sydney Common, about one-and-a-half miles wide and extending south from South Head Rd (now Oxford St) to where Randwick Racecourse
Randwick Racecourse
Royal Randwick Racecourse is a racecourse for horseracing in the Eastern Suburbs in Sydney, New South Wales. Randwick Racecourse, is operated by the Australian Jockey Club and known to many Sydney racegoers as headquarters...
is today. Part sandhills, part swamp and situated on the south-eastern fringe of the city, it was used as a rubbish dump in the 1850s and not regarded as an ideal place for sport. In 1851, part of the Sydney Common south of Victoria Barracks
Victoria Barracks, Sydney
Victoria Barracks is an Australian Army base in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. Victoria Barracks is located in the suburb of Paddington, between Oxford Street and Moore Park Road...
was granted to the British Army
British Army
The British Army is the land warfare branch of Her Majesty's Armed Forces in the United Kingdom. It came into being with the unification of the Kingdom of England and Scotland into the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707. The new British Army incorporated Regiments that had already existed in England...
for use as a garden and 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...
ground for the soldiers. Its first user was the 11th North Devonshire Regiment which flattened and graded the southern part of the rifle range adjacent to the Barracks.
In the next couple of years, the teams from Victoria Barracks combined themselves into a more permanent organisation and called themselves the Garrison Club. The ground therefore became known as the Garrison Ground when it was first opened in February 1854.
Up until that time Hyde Park
Hyde Park, Sydney
Hyde Park is a large park in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. Hyde Park is on the eastern side of the Sydney central business district. It is the southernmost of a chain of parkland that extends north to the shore of Port Jackson . It is approximately rectangular in shape, being squared at the...
had been the main sporting and racing ground in the colony but when it was dedicated as public gardens in 1856 city cricketers and footballers had to find somewhere else to play.
In the late 1860s another part of the Sydney Common, the area west of the Garrison Ground to the then Dowling Street, was opened for public recreation. It was named Moore Park
Moore Park, New South Wales
Moore Park is a large area of parkland in the Eastern Suburbs of Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia. It is part of Centennial Parklands, a collective of three parks being Moore Park, Centennial Park and Queens Park. Centennial Parklands is administered by the Centennial Park &...
after the Mayor of Sydney, Charles Moore, who planted a number of Moreton Bay Fig
Moreton Bay Fig
Ficus macrophylla, commonly known as the Moreton Bay Fig, is a large evergreen banyan tree of the Moraceae family that is a native of most of the eastern coast of Australia, from the Atherton Tableland in the north to the Illawarra in New South Wales, and Lord Howe Island. Its common name is...
trees which exist to this day. As well as the location of Sydney's first zoo
Zoo
A zoological garden, zoological park, menagerie, or zoo is a facility in which animals are confined within enclosures, displayed to the public, and in which they may also be bred....
, Moore Park was a regular venue for games between Sydney rugby clubs Sydney University and the Wallaroos. Sydney at the time was a small, dense city and best navigated on foot and Moore Park was on the outskirts. It was not liked so much by cricketers because it was too far from the city.
When the commander of the Sydney garrison, Lieutenant-Colonel John Richardson, aligned his soldiers to the East Sydney Cricket Club, the Garrison Ground became known as the Civil and Military Ground. In 1870 British troops left Victoria barracks and the future of the Civil and Military Ground became uncertain. However, with the closure of the Albert Ground in the 1870s, the NSW Cricket Association
New South Wales Cricket Association
The New South Wales Cricket Association is a sporting club who administer cricket in New South Wales, based at the Sydney Cricket Ground. Their trading name is Cricket NSW....
(NSWCA) began regular use of the Civil and Military Ground.
In 1875 the NSW Government began to upgrade the ground. Despite efforts by Victoria Barracks and then the Carlingford, Redfern, Fitzroy and Albert cricket clubs to take control, the then president of the NSWCA, Richard Driver
Richard Driver
Richard Driver was a Sydney solicitor, politician and cricket administrator.Driver was born in Cabramatta, New South Wales, son of Richard Driver, hotel-keeper, and his wife Elizabeth, née Powell...
(after whom Driver Avenue outside the ground is named), persuaded the government to let the NSWCA look after the ground's administration. In 1876, the ground was dedicated by Governor Sir Hercules Robinson.
The NSWCA had influential supporters. Driver himself was a prominent MP and solicitor for the City of Sydney Council
City of Sydney
The City of Sydney is the Local Government Area covering the Sydney central business district and surrounding inner city suburbs of the greater metropolitan area of Sydney, Australia...
. The Minister for Lands, Thomas Garrett, was also supportive; his son was about to break into the colonial side. It is hardly surprising therefore that within a couple of years of the NSWCA taking control of the ground, the governor, Sir Hercules Robinson, appointed Driver himself, William W. Stephen and Phillip Sheridan (after whom a grandstand was named), the first trustees. Two trustees were appointed by the government and one by the NSWCA. The close relationship between the Trust and the NSWCA is evidenced by the fact that they pooled funds for the next six years. The military's link with the ground was finally severed when John Richardson and the Sydney garrison went to fight in the Sudan
Mahdist War
The Mahdist War was a colonial war of the late 19th century. It was fought between the Mahdist Sudanese and the Egyptian and later British forces. It has also been called the Anglo-Sudan War or the Sudanese Mahdist Revolt. The British have called their part in the conflict the Sudan Campaign...
. The trustees then took the opportunity to rename the ground the Association Ground
In 1883 the most prominent trustee, Sheridan, regarding the ground as the responsibility of the trustees, began to act independently of the NSWCA, resulting in the NSWCA losing control of the ground. Over the next century there was constant conflict between the Trust and the NSWCA over whether other sports such as rugby
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...
, tennis
Tennis
Tennis is a sport usually played between two players or between two teams of two players each . Each player uses a racket that is strung to strike a hollow rubber ball covered with felt over a net into the opponent's court. Tennis is an Olympic sport and is played at all levels of society at all...
and cycling
Cycling
Cycling, also called bicycling or biking, is the use of bicycles for transport, recreation, or for sport. Persons engaged in cycling are cyclists or bicyclists...
, the organisers of which were all keen to use the venue, had access to it. One conflict in 1904, over the Trust's plan to hold a cycling event which clashed with a cricket match, ended up in court. The NSWCA's influence was eventually reduced even further over the years due to changes in the way the State Government appointed trustees.
Development
By the time of the first Sydney cricket test
Cricket in Australia
Cricket is one of the most popular sports in Australia, at international, domestic and local levels. Unlike most other sports played in Australia, cricket generates equal interest in all states of the nation. In 2007, a survey by Sweeney Sports found that 52% of the Australian public have an...
in February 1882, the ground could boast two grandstands; the Brewongle Stand at the southern end and the original Members' Stand, which had been built in 1878 in the north west corner where the current Members' Stand now sits. On opposite sides of the ground to the stands two spectator mounds were built. They became known as The Hill and the Paddington Hill.
In 1886, the Members' Pavilion was rebuilt at a cost of £6625. Membership was levied at two guineas.
Between 1888 and 1890 a loop in the tram line, which ran down Randwick Road (now Anzac Parade
Anzac Parade, Sydney
Anzac Parade is a major road in the south-eastern suburbs of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. It included part of the marathon during the 2000 Summer Olympics, and the blue line denoting the marathon's path still exists today.-Description:...
), was built to service the Ground and the Pastoral and Agricultural Society Ground (later the RAS Showgrounds and now Fox Studios) next door.
In 1894 the ground finally received its modern name, the Sydney Cricket Ground, which was followed by the opening of the Hill Stand, situated between The Hill and the Paddington Hill. It became known as the Bob Stand during the Depression years because it cost one shilling (a bob) to enter.
The first SCG scoreboard
Scoreboard
A scoreboard is a large board for publicly displaying the score in a game or match. Most levels of sport from high school and above use at least one scoreboard for keeping score, measuring time, and displaying statistics. Scoreboards in the past used a mechanical clock and numeral cards to...
was built in the two weeks leading up to the 1895-1896 inter-colonial match between New South Wales and Victoria
Victoria (Australia)
Victoria is the second most populous state in Australia. Geographically the smallest mainland state, Victoria is bordered by New South Wales, South Australia, and Tasmania on Boundary Islet to the north, west and south respectively....
. Although it was Sheridan's idea, the design was Ned Gregory's who believed that English scoreboards were inadequate. Requiring two men to operate it, the new scoreboard was hailed as one of the wonders of the cricket world. Boards with players' names on them were placed in different slits alongside scrolls of canvas with numbers painted on them which were rolled up and down to show the changing score. Under the scoreboard was a refreshment stall which sold, among other things, oysters.
In 1896 the Ladies' Stand was opened, along with a concrete cycling track which circled the inside of the ground. One of the carpenters who built the formwork for the track was George Bradman, father of Don Bradman. In 1898 floodlights were built over the cycling track so that night events could be held. In 1904 the scoreboard was rebuilt at the top of The Hill and in 1909 the Sheridan Stand, named after Phil Sheridan, was opened at the southern end, replacing the earlier Smokers' Stand.
In the period up to World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
the SCG was used for a wide variety of sports including athletics
Athletics (track and field)
Athletics is an exclusive collection of sporting events that involve competitive running, jumping, throwing, and walking. The most common types of athletics competitions are track and field, road running, cross country running, and race walking...
, tennis
Tennis
Tennis is a sport usually played between two players or between two teams of two players each . Each player uses a racket that is strung to strike a hollow rubber ball covered with felt over a net into the opponent's court. Tennis is an Olympic sport and is played at all levels of society at all...
, baseball
Baseball
Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each. The aim is to score runs by hitting a thrown ball with a bat and touching a series of four bases arranged at the corners of a ninety-foot diamond...
, football and cycling. The cycling track however was removed in 1920. In 1924 Ned Gregory's scoreboard was closed and the concrete scoreboard at the back of the Hill opened.
During the 1920s and 1930s crowds packed into the SCG to see Don Bradman play for New South Wales and Australia. Many of the huge gate takings that Bradman brought in for the NSWCA were spent on developing the ground. A large new stand was built at the northern end in two stages. It replaced the Northern Stand and was intended to also replace the Members' and Ladies' Stands. The first stage, begun while Bradman was still playing for New South Wales, was opened in 1936 at a cost of £90,000 and named the ‘M.A. Noble Stand' after the great Australian captain Monty Noble
Monty Noble
Montague Alfred Noble was an Australian cricketer who played for New South Wales and Australia. A right-hand batsman, right-handed bowler who could deliver both medium pace and off-break bowling, capable fieldsman and tactically sound captain, Noble is considered as one of the great Australian...
. The second stage, completed in 1973 at a cost of $2 million, was named the Bradman Stand after the great man himself.
Further redevelopment of the ground began in 1978 with the advent of World Series Cricket
World Series Cricket
World Series Cricket was a break away professional cricket competition staged between 1977 and 1979 and organised by Kerry Packer for his Australian television network, Nine Network. The matches ran in opposition to established international cricket...
and games played at night. When media giant Kerry Packer
Kerry Packer
Kerry Francis Bullmore Packer, AC was an Australian media tycoon. The son of Sir Frank Packer and Gretel Bullmore, the Packer family company owned controlling interest in both the Nine television network and leading Australian publishing company Australian Consolidated Press, which were later...
failed to obtain the television broadcast rights for cricket, he bought the top 30-40 players in the world and staged his own competition, World Series Cricket (WSC).
Packer applied to use the SCG for WSC in 1977 but the SCG Trust, which administered the ground, refused. To please the powerful Packer, the NSW Labor Government under Premier Neville Wran
Neville Wran
Neville Kenneth Wran, AC, CNZM, QC was the Premier of New South Wales from 1976 until 1986. He was National President of the Australian Labor Party from 1980 to 1986 and Chairman of both the Lionel Murphy Foundation and the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation from 1986...
, simply amended the Sydney Sports Ground and Cricket Ground Act. This removed the Trust's power to decide who played at the SCG and the NSWCA's traditional right over the ground. A new Trust was established with 12 members appointed by the Government and two elected by SCG members. The new Trust had no WSC opponents, and although legal action by the NSWCA stopped WSC games being played at the SCG in 1977, they were played there in 1978.
In the years since WSC the character of the SCG has somewhat changed. Six light towers were built in 1978 at a cost of $1.2 million so that cricket could be played at night, and two huge new stands were constructed at the southern end of the ground. The new Brewongle Stand was built on the site of the old Brewongle Stand at a cost $8.9 million and opened in 1980. The Churchill Stand, named after rugby league legend Clive Churchill
Clive Churchill
Clive Bernard Churchill AM was an Australian rugby league footballer and coach of the mid-20th century. An Australian international and New South Wales and Queensland interstate representative fullback, he played the majority of his club football with and later coached the South Sydney Rabbitohs...
, replaced the Sheridan Stand at a cost of $8.2 million and was opened in 1986.
The old concrete scoreboard was closed in 1983 and a new electronic board erected above The Hill. This board allowed the crowd to see video replays and provided more scope for advertising.
The Bob Stand has also gone, to North Sydney Oval
North Sydney Oval
-Development:* The first cricket pitch was laid on 6 December 1867, making it one of the oldest cricket grounds in Australia.* The first structure built, in 1879, was a simple pavilion overlooking the cricket ground...
, replaced by the Bill O'Reilly
Bill O'Reilly (cricketer)
William Joseph "Bill" O'Reilly , often known as Tiger O'Reilly, was an Australian cricketer, rated as one of the greatest bowlers in the history of the game. Following his retirement from playing, he became a well-respected cricket writer and broadcaster.O'Reilly was one of the best spin bowlers to...
Stand. This stand was originally named the Pat Hills Stand, after the NSW Labor Government Minister and SCG Trust member, when it was opened in 1984. However, the incoming State Liberal Government changed the name to the more appropriate O'Reilly Stand after the legendary spin bowler.
The Hill also has gone but the reason for that is a little harder to pin. Up until the 1990s the Hill was a grassy slope without seating. It was the 'outer ground' costing the least to get in and attracting working class
Working class
Working class is a term used in the social sciences and in ordinary conversation to describe those employed in lower tier jobs , often extending to those in unemployment or otherwise possessing below-average incomes...
patronage. The invention of the beer can and the portable cooler
Cooler
A cooler, cool box, portable ice chest, chilly bin , or esky most commonly is an insulated box used to keep food or drink cool. Ice cubes are most commonly placed in it to help the things inside stay cool...
in the 1960s increased alcohol consumption at cricket matches which in turn fuelled bad crowd behaviour. In the 1970s the advent of limited overs games held partially at night attracted a different kind of crowd to cricket at the SCG. They were less interested in the subtleties of the game and more in the excitement and spectacle. Brawling and excessive drinking were features of the crowd on the Hill at this time. Even the introduction of individual seating on the Hill failed to completely eradicate crowd misbehaviour. Stricter measures such as banning alcohol were later implemented with greater success.
Further developments have taken place in more recent years with the internal reconstruction of the M.A. Noble stand completed in 1994 and the opening of the NSW Cricket Centre in 1997. This facility includes indoor training wickets and administrative offices for Cricket NSW (formerly NSW Cricket Association). In 1999 the original electronic scoreboard was replaced by a new higher-definition video screen. In the 21st Century the Hill has been completely redeveloped with a new 12,000 seat Victor Trumper
Victor Trumper
Victor Thomas Trumper was an Australian cricketer known as the most stylish and versatile batsman of the Golden Age of cricket, capable of playing match-winning innings on wet wickets his contemporaries found unplayable. Archie MacLaren said of him, "Compared to Victor I was a cab-horse to a Derby...
Stand, completed in 2008. This stand brings the SCG's capacity to 46,000 spectators.
The SCG Trust has announced the MA Noble, Bradman and Dally Messenger Stands will be demolished and rebuilt before the 2015 Cricket World Cup, it will increase ground capacity to 48,000 spectators. Finally after the 2015 Cricket World Cup, the Trust is keen to redevelop the Bill O'Reilly stand, further increasing the grounds capacity. The ground will be a near complete modern "bowl" stadium with the exception of the two heritage listed Members and Ladies stands.
Sydney Cricket Ground Trust
The Sydney Cricket and Sports Ground Trust (popularly known as the Sydney Cricket Ground Trust) is an organisation that operates several sporting facilities in Sydney, Australia. The SCG Trust operates the Sydney Cricket Ground and Sydney Football Stadium at Moore Park in eastern Sydney. In mid-2008, its head office The Sheridan Building is opened, making it the third building to erect in the Gold Members Car Park, alongside the Headquarters of Sydney Roosters and New South Wales Rugby Union. Soon after it opened Sydney FC relocated their Headquarters inside the Sheridan Building. The Sydney Swans headquarters are located in the SCG accessible from Driver Avenue. In total, there are 4 different clubs from 4 different codes of sport with their headquarters reside at the ground.Statues
The Trust has commissioned 10 bronze sculpture statues to be placed around the grounds of the SCG and SFS. As of 2010 seven statues have been unveiled.The first statue commissioned was of bowler 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....
and was unveiled on 4 January 2008 by Benaud himself. Rugby League player Dally Messenger
Dally Messenger
Herbert Henry "Dally" Messenger was an Australian rugby union and rugby league footballer, recognised as one of the greatest ever players in either code. Messenger, or 'The Master' as he was dubbed, represented his country in both rugby football codes, playing two rugby union tests and seven...
was the next recipient of a statue which was unveiled on 20 March 2008 outside of the SFS. A statue of the fast 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...
was unveiled a year after the first statue on 5 January 2009. Rugby Union and Rugby League player Trevor Allan
Trevor Allan
Trevor Allan OAM was an Australian dual-code rugby international who captained Australia in rugby union before switching to rugby league with English club Leigh.-Rugby union club career:...
was the next to be unveiled on 5 June 2009 followed by the Australian Rules Football player Paul Roos
Paul Roos
Paul Roos may refer to:* Paul Roos , former Australian rules football player and Sydney Swans AFL coach* Paul Roos , Springbok rugby union captain* Paul Roos Gymnasium, a high school in Stellenbosch, South Africa...
on 29 August 2009. The next cricketer to be immortalised was batsman Stan McCabe
Stan McCabe
Stanley Joseph McCabe was an Australian cricketer who played 39 Test matches for Australia from 1930 to 1938. A short, stocky right-hander,...
unveiled on 5 January 2010. In 2010 a bronze statue of Reg Gasnier
Reg Gasnier
Reg Gasnier AM is an Australian former rugby league footballer and coach, regarded as one of the 20th century's finest players. He played in the centres for the St. George Dragons from 1959 to 1967...
was unveiled as the seventh inside the SCG precinct as part of the Basil Sellers
Basil Sellers
Basil Sellers AM, , grew up in the sports mad Railway Colonies in India where he was introduced to badminton, tennis and of course cricket. He migrated with his family to Australia in 1948, and was educated at Kings College, Adelaide. As a Businessman and philanthropist, Basil made his career...
Sports Sculpture project.
Aside from the statues honouring sporting champions a statue of famous spectator Yabba
Yabba
Stephen Harold Gascoigne, better known as Yabba, was an Australian sports fan, remembered as a heckler at Sydney Cricket Ground cricket and rugby league games in the early part of the 20th century...
was unveiled on 7 December 2009. He is the only statue placed inside the grounds taking over two seats on the concourse in front of the new Victor Trumper stand.
Cricket
In 1854 the Garrison Club defeated the Royal Victoria Club in the first recorded cricket match to be played at what was then the Garrison Ground. Although major games were played at the DomainThe Domain, Sydney
The Domain is 34 hectares of open space in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. It is located on the eastern edge of the Sydney central business district, near Woolloomooloo. The Domain adjoins the Royal Botanic Gardens and is managed by the Royal Botanic Gardens Trust, a division of the New South...
, the Garrison Ground was used for practice by the NSW cricket team in 1860 and by the Victorian team in 1861 the before inter-colonial matches in those years.
Cricket was first played in Australia in Sydney's Hyde Park in 1803. However, up until the appointment of trustees to look after the SCG in the late 1870s, several different grounds had been used for major matches. The Domain was first used for inter-colonial games and then the Albert Ground in Redfern but in time both became unavailable, the Domain because of its poor condition and because it could not be fenced in and the Albert Ground because it closed in the late 1870s.
After the closure of the Albert Ground the New South Wales Cricket Association began using the Association Ground. The first major game played there was the final of the Civil Service Challenge Cup on 25 October 1877, between the New South Wales Government Printing Office and the Audit Office, and the first first-class match was the inter-colonial game, New South Wales against Victoria, in February 1878.
During the 1878-79 season Lord Harris' England team toured Australia. The feature of the tourists game against New South Wales at the SCG in 1879 was a riot sparked apparently when the crowd disagreed with an umpiring decision by George Coulthard
George Coulthard
George Coulthard was a star Australian rules footballer who played for Carlton. He was also a notable cricketer who played for the Melbourne Cricket Club and briefly for Australia. As a cricketer he played only six first-class matches, five for Victoria and a Test match for Australia...
that went against the locals. Lord Harris believed the invasion of the ground by about 2000 spectators was actually started by bookmakers in the stand. One of the umpires for the match was Edmund Barton
Edmund Barton
Sir Edmund Barton, GCMG, KC , Australian politician and judge, was the first Prime Minister of Australia and a founding justice of the High Court of Australia....
, later to become Australia's first Prime Minister.
By the time the first test was played at the SCG between 17 February and 21 February 1882 the ground was in fine condition. The NSWCA had appointed Ned Gregory as curator and given him a cottage next to the ground for him and his family. Australia won that game by overhauling England's scores of 133 and 232 with scores of 197 and 5 for 169.
Don Bradman made his first visit to the ground in the 1920-21 season to watch the Fifth Test of the Australia and England series. In that game Charlie Macartney scored 170 to help seal a win for Australia.
Bradman scored the highest ever first-class innings of 452 at the SCG for New South Wales against Queensland in 1928-29. This record was surpassed by Hanif Mohammad
Hanif Mohammad
Hanif Mohammad is a former Pakistan cricketer. He played for the Pakistani cricket team in 55 Test matches between 1952/53 and 1969/70 and averaged 43.98, with twelve hundreds....
who scored 499 run out. It was further bettered by the West Indian Brian Lara
Brian Lara
Brian Charles Lara, TC, OCC, AM is a former West Indian international cricket player. Lara is generally regarded as one of the greatest batsmen of all time...
who scored 501 in 1994.
The 1928-29 season was a big one for cricket. On 15 December, the largest ever crowd to attend a cricket match at the SCG, 58,446, saw Australia and England play. With changes to the ground seating the record is unlikely to be beaten.
In the last test of the 1970-71 English tour, England fast bowler John Snow
John Snow
John Snow or Jon Snow may refer to:* Jon Snow, British newscaster* John Snow , founder of epidemiology and a major contributor to the development of anaesthesia* John W. Snow, 73rd United States Secretary of the Treasury...
struck Australian spinner and tailender Terry Jenner
Terry Jenner
Terrence James Jenner was an Australian cricketer who played nine Tests and one ODI from 1970 to 1975. He was primarily a leg-spin bowler and was known for his attacking, loopy style of bowling, but he was also a handy lower-order batsman...
on the head with a bouncer
Bouncer (cricket)
In the sport of cricket, a bouncer is a type of delivery, usually bowled by a fast bowler. It is pitched short so that it bounces on the pitch well short of the batsman and rears up to chest or head height as it reaches the batsman.Bouncers are used tactically to drive the batsman back on to his...
. The Sydney crowd let Snow and the English know they were not happy with his behaviour and when Snow took up his fielding position on the fence a spectator spoke to him and grabbed him by the shirt. Cans were thrown onto the field and England captain Ray Illingworth
Ray Illingworth
Raymond Illingworth, CBE is a former English cricketer, cricket commentator and cricket administrator. He was one of only nine players to have taken 2,000 wickets and made 20,000 runs in First class cricket, and the last one to do so...
took his team from the ground.
The first women's club cricket match was held at the SCG in 1886 when the Fernleas played the Siroccos. Although cricket was not seen as an appropriate game for women, women's cricket associations were formed in Victoria in 1905 and other states in the 1920s and 1930s.
Night cricket came to the SCG in 1978 with the first World Series Cricket match to be played at the SCG on 28 November that year. A crowd of 50,000 packed the ground.
Rugby league
Rugby league football was first played at the SCG on 22 June 1910 between Australia and New ZealandNew Zealand national rugby league team
The New Zealand national rugby league team has represented New Zealand in rugby league football since intercontinental competition began for the sport in 1907. Administered by the New Zealand Rugby League, they are commonly known as the Kiwis, after the native bird of that name...
.
Before the Sydney Football Stadium was built the New South Wales Rugby Football League premiership grand final was always played at the SCG. The ground was first used by the NSWRFL in 1913, and has hosted over 1,100 first grade games - more than any other ground. The SCG is often used for special rugby league heritage matches, both NRL and Internationals matches. When the ground was first used for rugby league fixtures in 1913, the Trust only gave players access to dressing sheds in the Sheridan Stand and did not allow use of the rooms in the Member's Stand. This rule was relaxed in 1918.
In 1920 England toured for the first time since World War I and huge crowds attended their games. The first match of the tour was at the SCG against Metropolis in front of nearly 68,000 spectators. Australia won the first Test in Brisbane and in the second Test at the SCG on 3 July the Australians sealed the series scoring five tries to win 21-8 and secure the Rugby League Ashes
Rugby League Ashes
The Ashes is the name given to the trophy awarded to the winner of a best-of-three series of rugby league football test series between Great Britain and Australia...
for the first time at home.
The attendance record for a rugby league match in Australia was broken in 1932 when 70,204 people saw Australia play England at the Sydney Cricket Ground. It was the first Test and it was in this game that the Australians first wore the green jersey with a double gold ‘V', which they have been wearing ever since. The British side boasted one of the great rugby league backlines with Sullivan, Smith, Ellaby
Alf Ellaby
Alf Ellaby was an English rugby league footballer of the 1920s and '30s. He was born in Liverpool. A , he remains the English national team's all-time top try-scorer and became the highest try scorer in the game's history with 446 tries until overtaken by Brian Bevan in 1954...
, Brogden and Atkinson. The gates of the SCG had to be closed to prevent another 15,000 from entering. Australia lost the game 8-6. The second game was the famous ‘Battle of Brisbane' Test, which Australia won. In the third Test back at the SCG Australia lead 11-3 until late in the game. Incredibly, GB scored three quick tries to snatch the game (18-13) and the series.
The next tour by GB was in 1946 , The "Indomitables" tour. The first test played on the 17th June was an 8 - 8 draw , the opening try of the series was scored by the legendary Frank Whitcombe
Frank Whitcombe
Frank William Whitcombe was a Welsh rugby union and professional rugby league footballer of the 1930s and '40s who played rugby union for Cardiff RFC, London Welsh RFC, and Army Rugby Union, playing at Prop, i.e...
for the tourists, in front of a crowd of 64,527. Great Britain went on to win the Ashe's. In 1950 Australia had not won a series against the team GB for 30 years but this time there was a big change. Britain had won the first Test and Australia the second, which made the third SCG Test the decider. Unfortunately, the tour coincided with a record amount of rain and by the time the teams arrived the SCG was a mud heap. Forty tonnes of soil were brought in and spread over the surface to try and dry it out. Tied 2-2 at half time, Australia scored the only try of the match late in the second half when winger Ron Roberts crossed in the corner to seal the win. At the end of the game the crowd of over 47,000 jumped the fence and invaded the field.
On 18 September 1965, the largest ever crowd at the SCG, 78,056, saw St George
St. George Dragons
The St George Dragons was an Australian Rugby league football club in St George, Sydney, New South Wales that played in Australia's top-level Rugby league competition from New South Wales Rugby Football League in 1921 until 1998; in 1999 they formed a joint venture with the Illawarra Steelers,...
beat South Sydney 12-8 in the NSWRFL grand final. This was also the largest rugby league crowd in Australia until 1994. The ground also hosted the 1968 Rugby League World Cup
1968 Rugby League World Cup
- Final standings :-Final:The final had been billed a 'debacle' following Great Britain's inexplicable loss to France in Auckland, leaving them to contest the final despite being beaten by Australia seven tries to none two days prior....
final.
One of the most courageous efforts at the SCG was John Sattler
John Sattler
John William Sattler is an Australian former rugby league footballer of the 1960s and '70s. He was a rugged Prop forward who led his club, South Sydney to four premiership victories between 1967 and 1971 and who played four tests for Australia – three as the national captain...
's performance in the 1970 grand final between South Sydney and Manly-Warringah
Manly-Warringah Sea Eagles
The Manly-Warringah Sea Eagles are an Australian professional rugby league club based on the Northern Beaches of Sydney. They compete in the National Rugby League's Telstra Premiership, the premier rugby league competition of Australasia...
. In the first ten minutes of the game South's captain Sattler had his jaw broken by a punch from a Manly forward. Sattler went down but pulled himself up on team mate Mike Cleary asking Cleary to help him so that the other players would not know he was hurt. In an act of supreme courage Sattler played on, refusing treatment at half time, to lead Souths to a 23-12 win. It was not until well after the game that he went to hospital. The Australian side to tour Britain was selected that night and, but for his injury, Sattler would have been picked as captain.
In 1975, in one of the most memorable grand finals ever, the local rugby league club team, the Eastern Suburbs Roosters
Sydney Roosters
The Sydney Roosters are an Australian professional rugby league football club based in the Eastern Suburbs of Sydney. The club competes in the National Rugby League and is one of the oldest and most successful clubs in Australian rugby league history, having won twelve New South Wales Rugby League...
, defeated the St George Dragons 38-0 to win the premiership. The Eastern Suburbs team is considered one of the best sides ever assembled and the eight tries to nil scoreline remained a record winning margin in a grand final until the 2008 Manly Warringah Sea Eagles vs Melbourne Storm grand final, where Manly won 40-0. However, the game was famous for reasons other than the scoreline. St George's Graeme Langlands
Graeme Langlands
Graeme 'Changa' Langlands, MBE, is an Australian former rugby league footballer and coach of the 1960s and 70s. He retired as the most-capped player for the Australian national team with 45 from 1963 to 1975, and captained his country in 15 Test matches and World Cup games. Langlands was the...
played with a misdirected painkiller that prevented him from playing anywhere near his best. Easts were without two of their stars: Mark Harris and Russell Fairfax
Russell Fairfax
Russell Lance Fairfax was an Australian professional rugby league footballer and coach of the 1970s and 80s....
, and coach Jack Gibson
Jack Gibson (rugby league)
Jack Arthur Gibson OAM was an Australian rugby league identity – a player, commentator and most notably a coach...
gambled on an unknown player to help fill the void - John Rheinberger
John Rheinberger
John Rheinberger is an Australian former rugby league and rugby union footballer. He made just the one appearance for Eastern Suburbs . That appearance came in the 1975 Grand Final in which Easts beat the St George Dragons 38-0...
- who played in his first and last game in first grade in the 1975 grand final. Leading by only 5-0 at half-time, the Roosters scored an avalanche of tries after the interval to humiliate the Dragons. Earlier in the same season, the Jack Gibson coached Roosters recorded the longest winning streak of any first grade rugby league club - 19 matches. It was the Eastern Suburbs Roosters' eleventh premiership victory and their second in succession.
In 1981, another memorable and emotional rugby league grand final was played at the SCG. Since joining the Sydney Premiership in 1947 the Parramatta
Parramatta Eels
The Parramatta Eels are an Australian professional rugby league football club based in the Sydney suburb of Parramatta. The Parramatta District Rugby League Football Club was formed in 1947, with their First Grade side playing their first season in the New South Wales Rugby Football League...
club had not won a grand final. In 1976 and 1977 it had suffered consecutive losses, first to Manly and then St George in the first replayed grand final. In 1981, the Eels 'dream team', comprising internationals Ray Price, Mick Cronin
Mick Cronin (rugby league)
Michael William "Mick" Cronin OAM is an Australian former rugby league footballer and coach. He was a goal-kicking centre for the Australian national team and a stalwart for the Parramatta Eels club. He played in 22 Tests and 11 World Cup matches between 1973 and 1982...
, Peter Sterling
Peter Sterling
Peter Maxwell John "Sterlo" Sterling OAM is an Australian rugby league commentator and former player. He was one of the all-time great halfbacks and a major contributor to Parramatta Eels' dominance of the New South Wales Rugby League premiership in the 1980s. Sterling played nineteen Tests for...
, Brett Kenny
Brett Kenny
Brett Kenny is an Australian former professional rugby league footballer of the 1980s and 90s. He was a five-eighth for the Australian national team, the New South Wales Blues representative side and the Parramatta Eels. He played in 17 Tests, made 17 State of Origin appearances and won 4...
, Steve Ella
Steve Ella
Steve Ella is an Australian former rugby league footballer of the 1980s. He was a utility back for the Australian national team, playing in 4 Tests between 1983 and 1985...
and Eric Grothe
Eric Grothe, Sr.
Eric "Guru" Grothe is an Australian former rugby league footballer of the 1970s and 1980s. A New South Wales and Australian representative winger, he played club football for the Parramatta Eels with whom he won four NSWRL premierships...
outscored Newtown
Newtown Jets
The Newtown Jets are an Australian rugby league football club based in Newtown, a suburb of Sydney's inner west. They currently compete in the NSWRL Premier League competition, having left the top grade after the 1983 NSWRFL season...
four tries to three to win 20-11 and secure their first premiership. Financial pressures at the Newtown club would result in the Jets competing in the New South Wales Rugby League first grade competition for only two seasons following their 1981 grand final appearance.
The ground lost the Grand Final and numerous games to the Sydney Football Stadium in 1988. Even so the ground continues to host occasional National Rugby League
National Rugby League
The National Rugby League is the top league of professional rugby league football clubs in Australasia. The NRL's main competition, called the Telstra Premiership , is contested by sixteen teams, fifteen of which are based in Australia with one based in New Zealand...
matches. and the 2008 ANZAC Test
ANZAC Test
The Anzac Test is an annual rugby league football test match . The test match is played annually between Australia and New Zealand on or around Anzac Day for the Bill Kelly Memorial Trophy.-Origins:Australia and New Zealand had competed in Rugby League Tests since 1908...
against New Zealand
New Zealand national rugby league team
The New Zealand national rugby league team has represented New Zealand in rugby league football since intercontinental competition began for the sport in 1907. Administered by the New Zealand Rugby League, they are commonly known as the Kiwis, after the native bird of that name...
.
Tennis
In 1885 the first inter-colonial tennis match was held at the SCG when Victoria played New South Wales although forms of the game were no doubt played in Australia from its colonial beginnings. All colonies of Australia were well established when the final versions of the rules of the game were codified by the Marylebone Cricket ClubMarylebone Cricket Club
Marylebone Cricket Club is a cricket club in London founded in 1787. Its influence and longevity now witness it as a private members' club dedicated to the development of cricket. It owns, and is based at, Lord's Cricket Ground in St John's Wood, London NW8. MCC was formerly the governing body of...
in 1875 and by the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club
All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club
The All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club , also known as the All-England Club, based at Aorangi Park, Wimbledon, London, England, is a private members club. It is best known as the venue for the Wimbledon Championships, the only Grand Slam tennis event still held on grass...
in 1877 when it held its first tournament at Wimbledon
The Championships, Wimbledon
The Championships, Wimbledon, or simply Wimbledon , is the oldest tennis tournament in the world, considered by many to be the most prestigious. It has been held at the All England Club in Wimbledon, London since 1877. It is one of the four Grand Slam tennis tournaments, the other three Majors...
.
Tennis was regularly played at the SCG in the early days. The Sydney tournament which was to become the New South Wales Open, was first played at the SCG in 1885 before moving to the NSW Lawn Tennis Club's courts at Double Bay, then to White City
White City Stadium (Sydney)
thumb|right|300px|White City Tennis Club circa 1923White City Stadium at the White City Tennis Club is a tennis venue in Rushcutters Bay, Sydney, Australia. The stadium was built in 1922 as a new venue for the New South Wales Championships...
and later to the Olympic Tennis Centre
NSW Tennis Centre
NSW Tennis Centre is a tennis venue in Sydney, Australia. It hosted the tennis events for the 2000 Summer Olympics, and each year it hosts the Sydney International in January, before the Australian Open...
at Homebush Bay.
Motor Racing
In 1898, Sydney cycle firm, Gavin Gibson Ltd, imported seven motorised tricycles produced by Count Jules-Albert de Dion and powered by one cylinder petrol engines designed by his partner Georges BoutonGeorges Bouton
Georges Bouton was a French engineer, who along with fellow Frenchman Marquis Jules-Albert de Dion, founded De Dion-Bouton in 1883. The pair had first worked together in 1882 to produce a self-propelled steam vehicle...
. On the evening of 1 January 1901, these seven machines raced around the concrete cycle track which ringed the inside of the SCG in those days to compete in Australia's first ever motor race.
Empire Games
The SCG was the main stadium for the 1938 British Empire Games1938 British Empire Games
The 1938 British Empire Games was the third British Empire Games, the Commonwealth Games being the modern-day equivalent. Held in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia from February 5–12, 1938, they were timed to coincide with Sydney's sesqui-centenary...
which were tied into the State's sesqi-centenary celebrations. Perhaps because of this the Federal Government provided no money and only £10,000 came from the State Government to cover the organising committee's administrative costs. The budget was therefore, very tight and using the existing SCG was one way of making ends meet. Cyclist Edgar "Dunc" Gray led the teams onto the ground and athletes ran on a makeshift grass track.
Rugby Union
Club rugby was first played at the then Civil and Military Ground as early as 1870, and the first inter-colonial game was played there in 1882. NSW beat QueenslandQueensland
Queensland is a state of Australia, occupying the north-eastern section of the mainland continent. It is bordered by the Northern Territory, South Australia and New South Wales to the west, south-west and south respectively. To the east, Queensland is bordered by the Coral Sea and Pacific Ocean...
28-4. From June 1911 the NSW Rugby League
New South Wales Rugby League
The New South Wales Rugby League is the governing body of rugby league in New South Wales and is a member of the Australian Rugby League. It was formed in Sydney on 8 August 1907 and was known as the New South Wales Rugby Football League until 1984 when forward thinking marketing managers decided...
had exclusive use of the SCG, as well as the Sydney Sports Ground
Sydney Sports Ground
The Sydney Sports Ground was a Stadium and Dirt track racing venue in Sydney, New South Wales. The ground was located where the car park of the Sydney Football Stadium currently sits. The ground had two main grandstands and was surrounded by a grass covered hill, giving it a capacity of more than...
and the Sydney Showground
Sydney Showground (Moore Park)
The former Sydney Showground at Moore Park was the site of the Sydney Royal Easter Show in New South Wales, Australia from 1882 until 1997, when the Show was moved to the new Sydney Showground at Homebush Bay, which was built for the Sydney 2000 Olympics...
, preventing rugby union games from being played there. Over the years the SCG hosted 71 rugby union tests before Sydney international matches were moved first to Waratah Rugby Park (Concord Oval), then the Sydney Football Stadium and later Stadium Australia. The largest ever crowd to watch a rugby union match at the SCG was 49,327 who saw NSW played New Zealand
All Blacks
The New Zealand men's national rugby union team, known as the All Blacks, represent New Zealand in what is regarded as its national sport....
on 13 July 1907.
Of those 71 tests none could have been more dramatic than the game against the South African Springboks on 7 August 1971. Marred by anti-apartheid protests, field invasions and objects being thrown onto the ground and halted several times to removed golf balls and protestors it was won by South Africa who went through the tour undefeated.
The SCG has been both a happy and unhappy hunting ground for Australian rugby union. One of the worst incidents to occur there was the sad demise of Ken Catchpole's international career. Robbed of a glorious retirement, his career ended in a disgraceful scandal. Australia was playing the New Zealand All Blacks and while Catchpole was trapped on the bottom of a ruck New Zealander second rower, Colin Meads, tried to drag him out by one leg, splitting him like a wishbone. Australia, although well beaten on this occasion, was well served by international-standard halfbacks and 20-year-old John Hipwell ran on for his first test as Catchpole was carried off. It was a sad end to an illustrious career.
Dramatic though that game was, no test could have been as important in the development of Australian Rugby Union
Australian Rugby Union
The Australian Rugby Union is the governing body of rugby union in Australia. It was founded in 1949 and is a member of the International Rugby Board the sport's governing body. It consists of eight member unions, representing each state and territory...
than the game against the touring Welsh
Wales national rugby union team
The Wales national rugby union team represent Wales in international rugby union tournaments. They compete annually in the Six Nations Championship with England, France, Ireland, Italy and Scotland. Wales have won the Six Nations and its predecessors 24 times outright, second only to England with...
team in 1978.
The 1978 Welsh had arrived in Australia as (the then) Five Nations Champions, Triple Crown
Triple Crown (Rugby Union)
In rugby union, the Triple Crown is an honour contested annually by the four national teams of the British Isles who compete within the larger Six Nations Championship: England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales. If any one team manages to win all their games against the other three they win the...
winners, the best rugby union team in the world but they were a sad and sorry bunch by the time they got to Sydney for the last game of the tour, the second test. The team was decimated by injuries and in two earlier tour games had suffered a last minute loss to Sydney and a humiliating defeat midweek to the Australian Capital Territory
ACT and Southern NSW Rugby Union
The ACT and Southern NSW Rugby Union is the governing body for rugby union in the Australian Capital Territory and southern regions of New South Wales. The union is represented by one team in the Super 14 competition, the Brumbies...
.
Rumours abounded that the Welsh were ready for a big 'get square' with Australian prop Steve Finnane, the so-called 'enforcer' of the Australian team. Finnane and other senior members of the team had vowed to avenge the defeat of the Australians by the Welsh on their last tour of the UK several years before. The SCG crowd didn't have long to wait because after the very first scrum Welsh prop Graham Price
Graham Price
Graham Price MBE is a former Welsh rugby union player who won 41 caps for as a prop forward.- Education :...
came out holding his bloodied jaw, the victim of a Finnane punch. Price had bored in on Finnane, his opposite number in the front row and Finnane reacted.
After Price left the field and the game continued for a short while until the Welsh, using a pre-determined code word, sparked an all-in-brawl. Wales lost the test and the two-test series.
In 1979 there was a one-off game against the All Blacks
All Blacks
The New Zealand men's national rugby union team, known as the All Blacks, represent New Zealand in what is regarded as its national sport....
at the SCG. The kicking of a young five-eighth named Tony Melrose closed out the New Zealanders and Australia won a try-less game 12-6, to take back the Bledisloe Cup
Bledisloe Cup
Rugby 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...
for the first time since 1949. The following year the Australians showed it was no fluke by beating New Zealand two tests to one in Australia to successfully defend the trophy for the first time.
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...
on 6 August 1881 between NSW and Victoria.
Essendon
Essendon Football Club
The Essendon Football Club, nicknamed The Bombers, is an Australian rules football club which plays in the Australian Football League...
and Melbourne
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....
played a premiership match at Moore Park in 1904 in front of the Governor General and Governor of NSW. Melbourne won and both teams had to return home by boat down the coast.
In the subsequent decades the ground was rarely used for Australian Rules except for the occasional exhibition match or interstate football carnival.
Australian Rules was not to make regular come back to the SCG for another hundred years when in 1982 the South Melbourne Club
Sydney Swans
The Sydney Swans Football Club is an Australian rules football club which plays in the Australian Football League . The club is based in Sydney, New South Wales. The club, founded in 1874, was known as the South Melbourne Football Club until it relocated to Sydney in 1982 to become the Sydney...
relocated to Sydney to make the SCG its home ground.
South Melbourne was formed in 1867, a foundation member of the first Australian rules competition the Victorian Football Association (VFA) and also its later replacement the Victorian Football League
Victorian Football League
The Victorian Football League which evolved from the former Victorian Football Association , taking its new name as from the 1996 season, is the premier Australian rules football league in Victoria The Victorian Football League (VFL) which evolved from the former Victorian Football Association...
(VFL). The club won five premierships with the VFA up to 1890 and four more in the VFL in the first half of the 20th Century. Lack of success in the post-war years left them ripe for relocation when the game's administrators were looking to expand the competition into other states. In 1982 South Melbourne moved to Sydney and the SCG to become the Sydney Swans.
Despite their shaky financial situation the Swans were the flavour of Sydney in the early years. Attendances rose and Swans matches at the SCG were the place to be seen, rivaling Sydney's main winter sport, rugby league. In the late 1980s Sydney Rules Ltd, the company which ran the licence for the club, recorded a profit of $600,000. However, when the stock market crashed in October 1987, the Swans went with it. The Swans managed to hold on and eventually gained a firmer foothold in Sydney.
Perhaps the Swans' greatest moment at the SCG was the 1996 preliminary final. With only minutes to go and level with opponents Essendon in front of a sell-out crowd, ageing full forward Tony Lockett
Tony Lockett
Anthony Howard "Tony" Lockett is a former Australian rules football player. Lockett is the highest goal scorer in the history of the VFL/AFL with 1,360 goals in a career of 281 games, that commenced in 1983 with the St Kilda Football Club, and finished in 2002 with the Sydney Swans...
put through a behind from 50 m to give them a one point win and their first grand final berth in decades. The Sydney crowds flocked to see the Swans when they were winning and were strengthened by Rugby League being at its lowest point during split ARL
Australian Rugby League
The Australian Rugby League is the governing body for the sport of rugby league in Australia. It is made up of state bodies, including the New South Wales Rugby League and the Queensland Rugby League...
and Super League
Super League (Australia)
Super League was an Australian rugby league football administrative body that conducted professional competition in Australasia for one season in 1997. Along with Super League of Europe, it was created by News Corporation during the Super League war which arose following an unsuccessful attempt to...
competitions in 1997. On 30 August 1997, the largest ever crowd to watch an Australian Rules game at the SCG, 46,168, came to see the Swans play Geelong
Geelong Football Club
The Geelong Football Club, nicknamed The Cats, is a professional Australian rules football club, named after and based in the city of Geelong, playing in the Australian Football League . The club has been the VFL/AFL premiers nine times, with a record equalling 3 in the AFL era. Geelong has also...
- a far cry from the 5,272 that turned up to a game against the Brisbane Bears
Brisbane Bears
The Brisbane Football Club, formerly nicknamed The Bears was an Australian rules football club and the first Queensland-based club in the Victorian Football League . The club played its first match in 1987, but struggled on and off the field until it made the finals for the first time in 1995...
just 7 years before - but the match was lost to Geelong by 10 points. In 1999, the SCG witnessed its only modern-day pitch invasion
Pitch invasion
A pitch invasion or field invasion, known as rushing the field in the United States, occurs when a crowd of people who are watching a sports game run onto the field, to celebrate or protest about an incident...
when legendary full-forward Tony Lockett
Tony Lockett
Anthony Howard "Tony" Lockett is a former Australian rules football player. Lockett is the highest goal scorer in the history of the VFL/AFL with 1,360 goals in a career of 281 games, that commenced in 1983 with the St Kilda Football Club, and finished in 2002 with the Sydney Swans...
kicked the record-breaking 1300th goal against Collingwood in round 10.
The SCG is the shortest field that is used for AFL games, at 153 metres long. However, Geelong's Skilled Stadium is narrower.
Other sports
The SCG has been a popular arena for a whole range of sports before the turn of the 20th century including cricket, tennis, baseball, soccer and cycling with athletics being staged there as early as 1879. On New Year's Day, 1880, possibly some of the most exotic sports ever seen at the SCG were staged when the 12th Annual Highlands Games was held. Organised by the Scottish community events included tossing the caberCaber toss
The caber toss is a traditional Irish athletic event practised at the Irish Highland Games involving the tossing of a large wooden pole called a caber. It is said to have developed from the need to toss logs across narrow chasms to cross them. In Irishtown the caber is usually made from a Larch tree...
, putting the stone
Stone put
The stone put is one of the main Scottish heavy athletic events at modern-day Highland games gatherings. Similar to the shot put, the stone put more frequently uses an ordinary stone or rock instead of a steel ball...
and other traditional Highland sports as well as Highland dancing. A crowd of 5000 attended. On 5 May 1964, 51,566 soccer fans came to the SCG to see NSW take on English club Everton F.C.
Everton F.C.
Everton Football Club are an English professional association football club from the city of Liverpool. The club competes in the Premier League, the highest level of English football...
. For the first time in the history of the A-League
A-League
The A-League is the top Australasian professional football league. Run by Australian governing body Football Federation Australia , it was founded in 2004 following the folding of the National Soccer League and staged its inaugural season in 2005–06. It is sponsored by Hyundai Motor Company...
, the SCG will hold a match between Sydney FC
Sydney FC
Sydney FC is a professional football club based in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia and competes in the country's premier football competition, the A-League...
and North Queensland Fury, as the Sydney Football Stadium next door is holding a 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...
match.
Concerts
The Michael Jackson HIStory tour in 1996 was a great show in the history of pop music: The DVD HIStory Tour Michael Jackson Live in SydneyThe live DVD of the Girlie Show Tour by Madonna
Madonna (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...
, was recorded at the stadium in 1993.
U.S punk rock band Green Day
Green Day
Green Day is an American punk rock band formed in 1987. The band consists of lead vocalist and guitarist Billie Joe Armstrong, bassist and backing vocalist Mike Dirnt, and drummer Tre Cool...
performed two shows of their American Idiot World Tour at the stadium in December 2005
Charity concert Wave Aid was held in early 2005, to raise money for the 2004 Asian Tsunami relief.
The Sound Relief concert was held on 14 March 2009.
The SCG is also mentioned in the song "Test Match Special", by the Duckworth Lewis Method.
Stands
In its present configuration, the SCG is a playing field surrounded by a collection of separate grandstand structures. From the northern end, clockwise, they are:- M. A. NobleMonty NobleMontague Alfred Noble was an Australian cricketer who played for New South Wales and Australia. A right-hand batsman, right-handed bowler who could deliver both medium pace and off-break bowling, capable fieldsman and tactically sound captain, Noble is considered as one of the great Australian...
Stand - Built 1936 - Members seating, also used for general public admission during events with low attendance. - Bradman Stand - Built 1973 - Public reserved seating.
- Dally MessengerDally MessengerHerbert Henry "Dally" Messenger was an Australian rugby union and rugby league footballer, recognised as one of the greatest ever players in either code. Messenger, or 'The Master' as he was dubbed, represented his country in both rugby football codes, playing two rugby union tests and seven...
Stand - General admission. - Bill O'ReillyBill O'Reilly (cricketer)William Joseph "Bill" O'Reilly , often known as Tiger O'Reilly, was an Australian cricketer, rated as one of the greatest bowlers in the history of the game. Following his retirement from playing, he became a well-respected cricket writer and broadcaster.O'Reilly was one of the best spin bowlers to...
Stand (previously named Pat Hills Stand) - Built 1984 - Corporate boxes and public reserved seating. - Victor TrumperVictor TrumperVictor Thomas Trumper was an Australian cricketer known as the most stylish and versatile batsman of the Golden Age of cricket, capable of playing match-winning innings on wet wickets his contemporaries found unplayable. Archie MacLaren said of him, "Compared to Victor I was a cab-horse to a Derby...
Stand - Constructed in 2007/2008, replaced Yabba's Hill and Doug Walters Stand, corporate boxes and public reserved seating. - Clive ChurchillClive ChurchillClive Bernard Churchill AM was an Australian rugby league footballer and coach of the mid-20th century. An Australian international and New South Wales and Queensland interstate representative fullback, he played the majority of his club football with and later coached the South Sydney Rabbitohs...
Stand - Built 1986 - Corporate boxes and public reserved seating. - Brewongle Stand - Built 1980 - Corporate boxes and public reserved seating.
- Ladies' Stand - Built 1896 - Members seating, also used for general public admission during events with low attendance.
- Members' Stand - Built 1878 - Members seating.
Seating capacity and other records
- Seating CapacitySeating capacitySeating capacity refers to the number of people who can be seated in a specific space, both in terms of the physical space available, and in terms of limitations set by law. Seating capacity can be used in the description of anything ranging from an automobile that seats two to a stadium that seats...
: 46,000 http://www.scgt.nsw.gov.au/Seating-Capacities.html - Largest rugby league match attendance: 78,056 (St GeorgeSt. George DragonsThe St George Dragons was an Australian Rugby league football club in St George, Sydney, New South Wales that played in Australia's top-level Rugby league competition from New South Wales Rugby Football League in 1921 until 1998; in 1999 they formed a joint venture with the Illawarra Steelers,...
v South SydneySouth Sydney RabbitohsThe South Sydney Rabbitohs are an Australian professional rugby league football team based in Redfern, a suburb of South-central Sydney, New South Wales. They participate in the National Rugby League premiership and are one of nine existing teams from the state capital...
, 18 September 1965) - Largest cricket match attendance: 58,446 (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...
v EnglandEnglish cricket teamThe 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...
, 15 December 1928) - Largest soccer match attendance: 51,566 (NSW v EvertonEverton F.C.Everton Football Club are an English professional association football club from the city of Liverpool. The club competes in the Premier League, the highest level of English football...
, 2 May 1964) - Largest rugby union match attendance: 49,327 (NSWNew South Wales WaratahsThe New South Wales Waratahs are an Australian rugby union football team, representing the majority of New South Wales in the Super 15 Super Rugby competition...
v New ZealandAll BlacksThe New Zealand men's national rugby union team, known as the All Blacks, represent New Zealand in what is regarded as its national sport....
, 13 July 1907) - Largest Australian rules football match attendance: 46,168 (SydneySydney SwansThe Sydney Swans Football Club is an Australian rules football club which plays in the Australian Football League . The club is based in Sydney, New South Wales. The club, founded in 1874, was known as the South Melbourne Football Club until it relocated to Sydney in 1982 to become the Sydney...
v GeelongGeelong Football ClubThe Geelong Football Club, nicknamed The Cats, is a professional Australian rules football club, named after and based in the city of Geelong, playing in the Australian Football League . The club has been the VFL/AFL premiers nine times, with a record equalling 3 in the AFL era. Geelong has also...
, 30 August 1997) - Largest concert attendance: 45,191 (WaveAidWaveAidWaveAid was a fund raising concert held on Saturday the 29th of January 2005 as a means for raising funds for the victims of the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake, known as the Boxing Day Tsunami. It was held at the Sydney Cricket Ground and broadcast on television by Channel [V] and MTV, and on radio...
benefit concert, 29 January 2005)
See also
- 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
- Melbourne Cricket GroundMelbourne Cricket GroundThe Melbourne Cricket Ground 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...
- List of international cricket centuries at lahore