MCG

The Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG) is an Australian sports stadium located in Yarra Park, Melbourne, and is the home ground of a number of Victorian-based teams, including Collingwood, Hawthorn, Melbourne and Richmond. It is the  tenth-largest stadium in the world, the largest in Australia, the largest stadium for playing cricket, and holds the world record for the highest light towers at any sporting venue. Internationally, the MCG is remembered as the centrepiece stadium of both the  1956 Summer Olympics and the  2006 Commonwealth Games. The open-air stadium is also one of the world's most famous  cricket venues, with the well-attended  Boxing Day  Test match commencing on  Boxing Day (26 December) each year. Throughout the winter, it serves as the home of  Australian rules football, with at least one game (though usually more) held there each round. The stadium fills to capacity for the  AFL Grand Final in late September, or early October. The MCG is listed on the  Victorian Heritage Register[3]  and was included on the  Australian National Heritage List on 26 December 2005. [4]

History
<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19.1875px;">Founded in November 1838 the Melbourne Cricket Club (MCC) selected the current MCG site in 1853 after previously playing at several grounds around Melbourne.

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19.1875px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;"><span style="color:rgb(58,58,58);font-family:Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;line-height:21px;">The first grandstand at the MCG was the original wooden members’ stand built in 1854, while the first public grandstand was a 200-metre long 6000-seat temporary structure built in 1861. Another grandstand seating 2000 and facing one way to the cricket ground and the other way to the park where football was played, was built in 1876 for the 1877 visit of James Lillywhite’s English cricket team. It was during this tour that the first Test Match was played.

When the Lillywhite tour stand burnt down in 1884 it was replaced by a new stand which seated 450 members and 4500 public. In 1897 second storey wings were added to ‘The Grandstand’, as it was known, increasing capacity to 9,000 and in 1900 it was lit with electric light.In 1881 the original members’ stand was sold to the Richmond Cricket Club for £55. A new brick stand, considered at the time to be the world’s finest cricket facility, was built in its place. In 1882 a scoreboard was built which showed details of the batsman's name and how he was dismissed.

<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19.1875px;">More stands were built in the early 20th Century. An open wooden stand was on the south side of the ground in 1904 and the 2084-seat Grey Smith Stand (known as the New Stand until 1912) was erected for members in 1906. The 4000-seat Harrison Stand on the ground’s southern side was built in 1908 followed by the 8000-seat Wardill Stand in 1912. In the 15 years after 1897 the stand capacity at the ground increased to nearly 20,000.

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19.1875px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;">In 1927 the second brick members’ stand was replaced at a cost of £60,000. The Harrison and Wardill Stands were demolished in 1936 to make way for the Southern Stand which was completed in 1937. The Southern Stand seated 18,200 under cover and 13,000 in the open and was the main public area of the MCG. It was where the famous Bay 13 was located, the MCG’s equivalent to The Hill at the Sydney Cricket Ground.

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19.1875px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;">The Northern Stand, also known as the Olympic Stand, was built to replace the old Grandstand for the 1956 Olympic Games. Ten years later, the Grey Smith Stand and the open concrete stand next to it were replaced by the Western Stand; the Duke of Edinburgh laid a foundation stone for the Western Stand on 3 March 1967, and it was completed in 1968. In 1986, the Western Stand was renamed the Ponsford Stand in honour of Victorian batsman Bill Ponsford.

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;"> T <span style="color:rgb(58,58,58);font-family:Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;line-height:21px;">he MCG was the home of Australia’s first full colour video scoreboard, which replaced the old scoreboard in 1982, located on Level 4 of the Ponsford Stand, with a second video screen added in 1994 almost directly opposite, located on Level 4 of the Olympic stand.. In 1985, light towers were installed at the ground, allowing for night football and day-night cricket games.

The 1928 Members' stand, the 1956 Olympic stand and the 1968 Ponsford stand were demolished one by one between late 2003 to 2005, and replaced with a new structure in time for the 2006 Commonwealth Games. Despite now standing as a single unbroken stand, the individual sections retain the names of Ponsford, Olympic and Members Stands. The redevelopment cost exceeded $400 million and pushed the ground's capacity over the 100,000 mark. Since redevelopment, the highest attendance was the 2010 Grand Final of the AFL with 100,016.In 1988 inspections of the old Southern Stand found concrete cancer and provided the opportunity to replace the increasingly run-down 50-year-old facility. The projected cost of $100 million was outside what the Melbourne Cricket Club could afford so the Victorian Football League took the opportunity to part fund the project in return for a 30-year deal to share the ground. The new Great Southern Stand was completed in 1992, in time for the 1992 Cricket World Cup, at a final cost of $150 million.

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;">From 2011 until 2013, the Victorian Government and the Melbourne Cricket Club will fund a $55 million refurbishment of the facilities of Great Southern Stand, including renovations to entrance gates and ticket outlets, food and beverage outlets, public concourses, toilets, function rooms, etc.; the grandstand itself will not be substantially modified as part of the refurbishment.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-5" style="line-height:1em;">[5]

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;"> <h2 style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;">Aussie Rules at the 'G <span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19.1875px;">Despite being called the Melbourne Cricket Ground, the stadium has been and continues to be used much more often for  Australian rules football<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19.1875px;">. Spectator numbers for football are larger than for any other sport in Australia, and it makes more money for the MCG than any of the other sports played there.

<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19.1875px;">It wasn’t until 1869 that football was played on the MCG proper, a trial game involving a police team. It was not for another ten years, in 1879, after the formation of the Victorian Football Association, that the first official match was played on the MCG and the cricket ground itself became a regular venue for football. Night matches were even played that year using specially erected light towers.

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19.1875px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;">In the early years, the MCG was the home ground of Melbourne Football Club, Australia’s oldest club, established in 1859 by the founder of the game itself, Thomas Wills. Melbourne won five Challenge Cup premierships during the 1870s using the MCG as its home ground.

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19.1875px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;">The first of nearly 2500 Victorian Football League/Australian Football League games to be played at the MCG was on 15 May 1897, with Melbourne beating Geelong 64 to 19.

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19.1875px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;">Several Australian Football League (AFL) clubs later joined Melbourne as in using the MCG as their home ground: Richmond (1965), North Melbourne (1985), Collingwood (2000) and Hawthorn (2000).

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19.1875px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;">The VFL/AFL Grand Final has been played at the MCG every season since 1902, except in 1924, when no Grand Final was held because of the season's round-robin finals format (it hosted three of the six games in the Finals Series), 1942–1945, when the ground was used by the military during World War II; and in 1991, as the construction of the Great Southern Stand had temporarily reduced the ground’s capacity below that of Waverley Park. All three Grand Final Replays have been played at the MCG.

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19.1875px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;">Before the ground was fully seated, the Grand Final could draw attendances above 110,000. The record for the highest attendance in the history of both the venue and the sport was set in the 1970 VFL Grand Final, with 121,696 in attendance.

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19.1875px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;">Since being fully seated, Grand Final attendances are typically between 95,000 and 100,000, with the record of 100,016 attending the 2010 AFL Grand Final.

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19.1875px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;">In the modern era, most finals games held in Melbourne have been played at the MCG. Under the current contract, ten finals (excluding the Grand Final) must be played at the MCG over a five-year period. Under previous contracts, the MCG was entitled to host at least one match in each week of the finals, which on two occasions required a non-Victorian club to play a "home" final in Victoria.

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19.1875px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;">

The Saints at the 'G
With the MCG being the 'home of football,' the Saints have played in over 200 matches at the hallowed ground, but have an abysmal record of just 77 wins from 209 games (as at the end of the 2012 season). Due to a poor stadium deal at Etihad Stadium, the Saints now play a number of home games at the MCG each season in order to boost revenue. Several tenants of the Docklands venues have been complaining for years that returns from MCG are greater than those at Etihad, even when the crowd size is the same. As a result, the club now plays a number of home games at the MCG each season, which also provides for valuable experience come September, as the MCG  is the venue of chocie for the finals series in Victoria.