Victoria Park, Melbourne
Victoria Park, Melbourne
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1939389

Victoria Park, Melbourne

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1939389

Victoria Park, Melbourne

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Victoria Park, Melbourne

Victoria Park is a sports venue in Abbotsford, a suburb of Melbourne in Victoria, Australia. The stadium is oval shaped and was built to host Australian rules football and cricket matches. In the past Victoria Park featured a cycling track, tennis courts, and a baseball club that once played curtain raisers to football matches.

Victoria Park is historically notable as a former Australian Football League (known as the Victorian Football League until 1989) venue between 1892 and 1999 and headquarters of the Collingwood Football Club for 107 years until 2004. It was also a temporary home ground for the Fitzroy Football Club for the 1985 and 1986 seasons. The ground is listed on the Victorian Heritage Register and is of state heritage significance.

At its peak, from 1959 to the late 1980s, Victoria Park was the third largest of the suburban VFL stadiums after the Melbourne Cricket Ground and Princes Park. However, in the 1990s the AFL's ground consolidation policy forced clubs away from their traditional home grounds and Collingwood played their last AFL game there in 1999. Collingwood continued to use Victoria Park as a training and administration base up until 2005. The club has since returned to the venue to play AFL Women's, VFL Women's and Victorian Football League home matches.

Victoria Park was established in 1879 on Dight's Paddock by Frederick Trenerry Brown and David Abbot as part of the planned Cambellfield Estate. The twelve hectares of land that was known as "Dight's Paddock" until its sale was used as cattle agistments from 1838 when the land was sold at auction in Sydney. In 1878 Fred Brown arranged for his uncle Edwin Trenerry to send him £12,000 to be used to purchase the 12-hectare (30-acre) paddock. Edwin Trenerry was a resident of Cornwall, UK. In 1882 the land was given to the citizens of Collingwood for their "resort and recreation". A cricket pitch and cycling track were installed and the ground was used by the Capulet Cricket Club and local junior football clubs.

The first game at Victoria Park was witnessed by an estimated 16,000 spectators and although Collingwood lost, it signalled the popularity and drawing power of the Collingwood Football Club and Victoria Park.

The first major stand was completed midway through the 1892 season and it was not long before the club was back at the town hall asking the council to fund the construction of further facilities to accommodate the enormous following the club generated. In 1900, the Ladies Stand was constructed, and in 1909 architect Thomas Watt designed the Member's Stand. The Ladies Stand, on the ground's north side along Abbott Street, was pulled down in 1929 to make way for the Jack Ryder Stand. This grandstand would provide state-of-the-art facilities for players of both the Collingwood Football and Cricket Clubs and also seated approximately 3,000 supporters. The Ryder Stand was designed by architects Peck and Kemter. The steel-framed concrete stand with cantilevered roof was named after cricketer Jack Ryder.

By the end of the 1929 season Collingwood had completed the third premiership of the record-breaking four in a row. The team was perceived to be invincible at Victoria Park and all rival clubs dreaded travelling there. This was in stark contrast to the prevailing economic conditions as the suburb was one of the hardest hit by the Great Depression. For many in the area, to see the Magpies win at Victoria Park was the only relief from melancholy of daily life on the unemployment queue; the football club offered sustenance workers free entry to games during this period.

The park's record attendance was set in April 1948, when 47,000 spectators witnessed Collingwood defeat South Melbourne.

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