Central Coast Stadium

Central Coast Stadium is a sports venue in Gosford on the Central Coast of New South Wales, Australia. From the establishment of the first venue at the site in 1915 it was known as Waterside Park, being renamed Grahame Park after significant expansion in 1939. Since then it has had several names incorporating that name, but as of 2025^[update] it is called Polytec Stadium under naming rights. The stadium is home to the Central Coast Mariners Association football club which competes 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.

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 the 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.

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. Three grandstands with a combined capacity of 20,000 were built by Abigroup. 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 Warringah Sea Eagles) taking residence there until their dissolving after the 2002 season.^{[citation needed]}

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.^{[citation needed]}

The stadium gained its second full-time tenant in 2005 with the formation of the Central Coast Mariners, a team in the newly formed national A-League football competition. It became the first full-time 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.^{[citation needed]}

The stadium continues to host NRL competition matches from time to time, as well as a some 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. In 2014, the NSW Country Eagles hosted a National Rugby Championship match at Central Coast.^{[citation needed]}

In recent years the Sydney Roosters have hosted one NRL game per season at Central Coast Stadium; other clubs such as the South Sydney Rabbitohs, Wests Tigers, Manly-Warringah Sea Eagles and Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs have also taken games to the Central Coast. In 2004, Central Coast Stadium played host to two North Queensland Cowboys matches, the first of which resulted in a historic 20–20 draw with wooden spooners South Sydney, the first such result since golden point was introduced in 2003.