Central Coast Stadium

Central Coast Stadium, as of 2011^[update] named Bluetongue Stadium due to sponsorship, is a sports venue in Gosford, on the Central Coast of New South Wales. The stadium is home to the Central Coast Mariners Football Club who compete in the A-League. The stadium also hosts rugby league and rugby union fixtures on an ad hoc basis as well as other major social events.

The stadium was originally designed to be the home stadium for the North Sydney Bears rugby league football club.

The stadium is rectangular and is unusual in that seating is located on only three sides of the ground. The southern end is open giving filtered views of Brisbane Water through a row of palm trees. With an all seater capacity of 20,119 it was as of 2011^[update] the sixth largest stadium in the A-League. It is within walking distance of the Gosford CBD and Gosford railway station. The Central Coast Leagues Club and League Club Field are adjacent to the stadium, across Dane Drive.

History

In 1911, Erina Shire Council proposed to create a park on the shore of Brisbane Water. The park required much land to be reclaimed from marshland. It also required privately owned land to be purchased by council and a section of road to be demolished. Waterside Park was opened in 1915 and a cricket pitch was added during that year. Further reclamation of the foreshore extended the park during the Depression that gave work to the unemployed. By 1939 surplus railway land had been added and a Bowling Club and green as well as tennis courts had been constructed. In 1939 the Park was renamed Grahame Park, after the then mayor of Gosford, William Calman Grahame.^[1]

A full stadium was then touted and later built in the late 1990s, planned to be ready in 1999 for NRL club the North Sydney Bears, before construction problems including large spells of inclement weather delayed completion. The stadium finally opened in early 2000 as NorthPower Stadium at Grahame Park, the Northern Eagles National Rugby League team (a merging of the aforementioned Bears and the Manly Sea Eagles) taking residence there until their dissolving at the conclusion of the 2002 season. In 2003, with no major sporting team in residence, the stadium played host to three group matches in the 2003 Rugby World Cup. The Pacific Islanders rugby union team played one match at the stadium on their 2004 tour. The stadium gained its second fulltime tenant in 2005 with the formation of the Central Coast Mariners, a team in the newly-formed national A-League soccer competition. It became the first fulltime national sporting competition to have a team play at the stadium. Further use of the stadium in 2006 follows from it being the home ground to the Central Coast Waves rugby union team, which joined the Shute Shield in 2006. The stadium continues to host NRL competition matches from time to time, as well as a number of pre-season trials. The Central Coast Rays, the Central Coasts' Australian Rugby Championship team, played out of the stadium during the only season of the competition in 2007. The stadium continued as a home to the Mariners A-League side as of 2007^[update], and hosted NRL matches throughout the 2008 Centenary Year.

Landlord & Leasehold

Gosford City Council are the landlord of Grahame Park that includes the Stadium. The current lessee is Ognis Pty Ltd.^[2][3]

Name Changes

There has been several name changes since the Stadium was built, primarily reactions relating to sponsorship:

• Waterside Park, from 1915;
• Grahame Park, from 1939;
• NorthPower Stadium at Graham Park, from January 2000;
• Central Coast Stadium at Grahame Park, from 23 September 2002;
• Central Coast Express Advocate Stadium at Grahame Park, from 11 February 2003;
• Central Coast Stadium at Grahame Park, from 21 March 2005;^[4]
• Central Coast Blue Tongue Stadium at Grahame Park, from 28 March 2006.^[5]

Attendance Records

Record crowds for different sports:

Notes

References

External links

• Official website for Central Coast Stadium
• National Rugby League
• A-League Football
• Central Coast Mariners
• Central Coast Stadium at Austadiums