Whitten Oval

Whitten Oval (also known as Mission Whitten Oval under a naming rights agreement) is a stadium in the inner-western suburbs of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, located in Barkly Street, Footscray. It is the training and administrative headquarters of the Western Bulldogs (formerly the Footscray Football Club), which competes in the Australian Football League (AFL). The ground is also the home of the club's women's and reserves teams which compete in the AFL Women's (AFLW), Victorian Football League (VFL), and VFL Women's (VFLW).

Formerly known as the Western Oval, the venue was renamed in honour of Ted Whitten in 1995, a former player, captain and coach for the club. A statue of Whitten is located at the entrance of the oval.

The Whitten Oval is the centrepiece of a reserve that, from 1860, was a stone quarry used by the railways. In 1866, the quarry was turned into a reserve that included botanical gardens. Other former quarries within the City of Footscray that were turned into public gardens in this era include the Yarraville Reserve, which is the site of the current Yarraville Oval, off Williamstown Road; the Yarraville Gardens, off Hyde Street; and Footscray Park, which fronts the Maribyrnong River.

In 1886, after moving from ground to ground, the local council granted the local football club permission to use the Western Reserve as its home ground. In 1883, the Prince Imperial Football Club reverted to its original name from its formation in the mid-1870s and Footscray Football Club was reformed. The club had to turn the gardens into a football field, building a railing system to surround the playing and dragging the pavilion from the Barkly Street end to the other.

While the gardens became known as the David Spurling Reserve, the oval within the gardens became the Western Oval.

Footscray used Western Oval as its home ground almost continuously until 1997. It was absent from the ground only in 1942, when it was commandeered by military personnel during World War II; during that season, Footscray played its home games at the nearby Yarraville Oval, which was vacant because the VFA, in which the regular tenant Yarraville Football Club competed, was in recess. In 1943, the club returned to Western Oval.

In 1955, the ground record attendance was set for the oval when 42,354 turned out on 9 July to see then-defending premiers Footscray defeat Collingwood by six points in Round 12, 1955. In 1965, Footscray considered leaving Western Oval, and made an application to the City of Sunshine for a lease at the new football ground it was developing at Skinner Reserve, approximately 3 km west in Braybrook; the Sunshine Council ultimately rejected the application, as it would have required the breaking of an agreement it already had with the VFA's Sunshine Football Club.

In 1983, struggling VFA Division 2 club Yarraville played its home games at Western Oval on Sundays. This was the only season of the arrangement, as the club folded before the 1984 season.