List of Australian Football League grounds

Patersons Stadium

TIO Stadium

Cazaly's Stadium

Metricon Stadium

The Gabba

Manuka Oval

Aurora Stadium

Adelaide Oval

Simonds Stadium

MCG

Etihad Stadium

SCG

ANZ Stadium

Spotless Stadium

Blundstone Arena

Traeger Park

Current Australian Football League grounds in Australia

The Australian Football League has numerous grounds upon which senior VFL/AFL games have been played. This list comprises current grounds in use, former grounds in use (both major and minor), regional pre-season grounds and international grounds.

In accordance with the Laws of Australian football, a ground must be grassed, have a minimum length of 135 metres (443 ft) and a minimum width of 110 metres (360 ft).^[1] Most Australian rules football grounds are also used for cricket, which is also played on a grassed, oval-shaped ground, and it is commonplace for a ground to be used for football in winter and cricket in summer.

Due to the popularity of Australian rules football, particularly in southern Australia, most of Australia's largest stadiums by capacity are used for Australian rules football; and it is therefore common to use those stadiums for other high-drawing events, particularly sporting events. Sports such as Rugby and soccer can be readily played on an Australian rules football arena, as their rectangular fields are typically small enough to be set on the larger oval.

The oldest Australian Football League ground is the Melbourne Cricket Ground. The ground was built in 1854 and is still used for hosting AFL matches, including each year's Grand Final. The ground also has the largest capacity, at 100,024. The ground to most recently be used for its first Australian Football League matches is Traeger Park in Alice Springs, Northern Territory, on 31 May 2014.

A total of seventeen different venues will be used for matches during the 2015 AFL season. As of the end of 2014, a total of 44 different venues have hosted VFL/AFL premiership matches since the league was established in 1897.

AFL/VFL premiership season venues

Current grounds

The following table shows a list of all of grounds that are currently used in the Australian Football League, as of the 2014 AFL season. The table includes grounds where teams have commercial deals in place to transfer home games to these grounds each season but are not full time tenants of those grounds; in these cases, the club is shown in italics in the current tenants column.

Current Australian Football League grounds

Ground	Image	Other/sponsored names	City	State/territory	Capacity	First used	Current tenant(s)
Melbourne Cricket Ground		MCG	Melbourne	Victoria	100,024[2]	1897	Carlton Collingwood Hawthorn Melbourne Richmond
Stadium Australia		Telstra Stadium (2002–2007) ANZ Stadium (2008–present)	Sydney	New South Wales	82,500[3]	2002	Sydney GWS Giants
Docklands Stadium		Colonial Stadium (2000–02) Telstra Dome (2003–08) Etihad Stadium (2009–present)	Melbourne	Victoria	56,347[4]	2000	Essendon North Melbourne St Kilda Western Bulldogs
Adelaide Oval			Adelaide	South Australia	53,583[5]	2011[n 1]	Adelaide Port Adelaide
Sydney Cricket Ground		SCG	Sydney	New South Wales	48,000[6]	1903[7]	Sydney
Subiaco Oval		Patersons Stadium (2011–2014) Domain Stadium (2015–present)	Perth	Western Australia	42,922[8]	1987	Fremantle West Coast
Gabba, TheThe Gabba		Brisbane Cricket Ground	Brisbane	Queensland	42,000[9]	1991	Brisbane
Westpac Stadium			Wellington	New Zealand	36,000[10]	2013	St Kilda[n 2][11]
Kardinia Park		Shell Stadium (1999–2001) Baytec Stadium (2002 pre-season) Skilled Stadium (2002–2011) Simonds Stadium (2012–present)	Geelong	Victoria	33,000[12]	1941	Geelong
Carrara Stadium		Metricon Stadium (2011–present)	Gold Coast	Queensland	25,000[n 3][13]	1987	Gold Coast
Sydney Showground Stadium		Škoda Stadium (2012–2013) Spotless Stadium (2014-pres)	Sydney	New South Wales	25,000	2012	Greater Western Sydney[14]
York Park		Aurora Stadium (2004–present)	Launceston	Tasmania	20,000[15]	2001	Hawthorn[n 2]
Bellerive Oval		Blundstone Arena (2012–present)	Hobart	Tasmania	20,000	2012	North Melbourne[n 2][14]
Manuka Oval		StarTrack Oval Canberra	Canberra	ACT	15,000[16]	1998	Greater Western Sydney
Marrara Stadium		TIO Stadium (2006–present)	Darwin	Northern Territory	15,000[17]	2004	Melbourne[n 2]
Cazaly's Stadium[18][19]			Cairns	Queensland	12,000[20]	2011	Western Bulldogs[n 2]
Traeger Park		TIO Traeger Park	Alice Springs	Northern Territory	10,000[21]	2014[22] (Scheduled)	Melbourne[n 2]

1. ↑ Adelaide Oval hosted its first AFL match in Round 24 of the 2011 season as a Port Adelaide home game against Melbourne. The ground has been redeveloped and host all Adelaide Crows and Port Adelaide Power home games from the 2014 season onwards, replacing Football Park.
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 The club is not a full-time tenant of the ground, but has a commercial deal in place to play home games at the venue.
3. ↑ Redevelopment for the 2018 Commonwealth Games

Former major grounds

Current and former VFL/AFL venues in metropolitan Melbourne. Current venues shown in red; former major venues shown in blue; other venues shown in yellow

The following table comprises a list of former grounds that were at one stage the primary home ground for a club to play its VFL/AFL matches on.

Most of the grounds were the original home of current teams (for example, Arden Street Oval was North Melbourne's home ground) and have ceased hosting VFL/AFL matches, usually due to location and lack of capacity. Princes Park was the last of the suburban venues to see an AFL game, with the last match occurring in 2005. These grounds now usually serve as a boutique training oval and administrative base for these AFL clubs, and some are used for TAC Cup, VFL or suburban league matches.

Waverley Park (originally known as VFL Park), located in Mulgrave, Victoria was the first purpose-built stadium for VFL/AFL matches, opening in 1970. Until the 1990s, it did not serve as any team's home ground, but was instead a neutral venue to which each club shifted one or two of its home matches each year; in the 1990s, it was adopted as a home ground by Hawthorn and St Kilda. Original plans called for the grounds capacity to be 155,000, which would have made it one of the largest stadiums in the world. The full plans were never built, however due to objections from the MCG trust, and its capacity was set at 78,000. The venue, with its planned higher capacity, was originally to be a replacement for the Melbourne Cricket Ground as host of the VFL's Grand Final. However, in 1982/1983, when the extensions to finish the original plans were due to commence, the Government of Victoria refused to approve the plans for the stadium because the upgrade would have threatened the Melbourne Cricket Ground's right to host the Grand Final. Hence, no further development ever occurred and the capacity was set at 78,000. It was used until 1999, and was replaced by the Docklands Stadium.

Football Park, located in West Lakes, Adelaide, had a similar history to Waverley Park; it was purpose built for South Australian National Football League games and opened in 1974, replacing Adelaide Oval as the primary venue for the league. Unlike Waverley Park, it did become the venue for SANFL Grand Finals. It was the primary South Australian venue for VFL/AFL matches from 1991, when the league expanded into Adelaide, until 2013, and it was replaced by the newly refurbished Adelaide Oval.

Former minor grounds

Minor grounds have been used in the VFL/AFL, but only sparingly. There have been two main reasons historically for this:

• To spread the game to other parts of the country. A prominent example of this is Round 8, 1952, when all games for that round were played at minor grounds throughout Australia.
• Due to unavailability of primary home grounds. In particular, minor grounds were also used throughout World War II, as some of the larger grounds throughout Victoria were being occupied by servicemen.

Pre-season venues

The following list, is a list of the venues that have been used in AFL Pre-season competition.

Many of the grounds were used in the Regional Challenge stage of the AFL Pre-season competition, NAB Cup, which was used to bring AFL games to regional centres of South Australia, New South Wales, Queensland, Northern Territory, Western Australia and Victoria.

International exhibition / pre-season venues

The following is a list of all of the international venues where a game of Australian rules football featuring VFL/AFL clubs has been played (in order of year last used). International matches have included pre-season competition matches or postseason exhibition matches. As of the end of 2013, the only international venue to host a premiership match is Westpac Stadium, in Wellington, New Zealand.

The first international Australian rules football exhibition match was in London, England, in 1916. A team of Australian soldiers stationed in England at the time formed a team to play against a "training group". The game brought a crowd of 3,000 people that even included the Prince of Wales (later King Edward VIII) and King Manuel II of Portugal.

The more recent AFL international matches have been part of the pre-season competition format and been highly successful. Countries that have hosted such matches include: United Arab Emirates, South Africa and United Kingdom. There are also plans to expand the game further into countries such as India^[55] and Japan.^[56]

See also

• List of sports venues in Australia
• List of Australian rugby union stadiums by capacity
• List of National Basketball League (Australia) venues
• List of cricket grounds in Australia
• List of Australian rugby league stadiums
• List of soccer stadiums in Australia

References

External links

• List of AFL/VFL premiership season venues with game statistics