Surface Grass Opened 1860 | Closed 1921 Demolished 1922 | |
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Similar Corio Oval, Brunswick Street Oval, Moorabbin Oval, Blacktown ISP Oval, Windy Hill - Essendon | ||
The East Melbourne Cricket Ground was a grass oval sports venue located at the corner of Wellington Parade and Jolimont Parade, in East Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
Contents
History
The ground was opened in 1860 and closed in 1921. It adjoined the Melbourne Cricket Ground and was not far from the Richmond Cricket Ground, all three grounds being sited in the area formerly known as Captain Lonsdale's Cow Paddock, now Yarra Park.
Cricket
East Melbourne Cricket Club was the most successful member of the Victorian Cricket Association during the 19th Century and early 20th Century, winning more than half of the VCA's Premierships during that period. The club was formed in 1857 as the Abbotsford Cricket Club but they soon changed their name as part of a putsch to use the East Melbourne ground. The team mainly consisted of Scotch College old boys.
Four first-class cricket games were played at the ground in the 1880s, including the Smokers v Non-Smokers match, in which the Non-Smokers made 803, at the time a world record innings score.
Football
The East Melbourne Cricket Ground was used for Australian rules football games during the winter months. The ground hosted the first-ever interstate representative football match, on 1 July 1879, between Victoria (represented by the VFA) and South Australia. The match was attended by more than 10,000 people. It also hosted the first intercollegiate football match in Melbourne, played on 21 July 1881 between teams from the University of Melbourne colleges Trinity and Ormond.
Tenant football clubs of the ground included:
As a venue for football, the East Melbourne Cricket Ground had an unusual quirk that the field sloped downhill towards the railway end, but was often affected by a strong wind which blew to the pavilion end.
The largest football crowds seen at the venue were for Victorian Football Association finals matches. An estimated crowd of 25,000 saw the 1907 VFA Final, played between Williamstown and West Melbourne. The record for a VFL match was 18,000, set twice during the 1921 VFL season.
Closure
After the 1921 football season, the ground was closed and then demolished to make way for an extension of the Jolimont Yard railway sidings.
When the East Melbourne Cricket Club lost the use of the ground in 1921, it amalgamated with the Hawthorn Cricket Club to form the Hawthorn-East Melbourne Cricket Club, and moved to Hawthorn's Glenferrie Oval. One of the wooden stands was moved from East Melbourne to Glenferrie Oval where it stood until 1965 when it was replaced by the Dr A.S. Ferguson Stand.
After the Essendon Football Club lost the use of the ground, it moved to the Essendon Recreation Reserve; however, it had initially tried to move to the North Melbourne Recreation Reserve, resulting in a off-field political struggle between the Essendon Association and North Melbourne Football Clubs, the VFL and the VFA.
The former site of the ground has now been taken over by a housing estate, a feature of which is a semi-circular housing block with a tower, obviously designed to look like an ersatz football pavilion.