Sheep, bicycles and a 1911 scoreboard: the long life of Adelaide Oval
Before the first ball was bowled at Adelaide Oval in December 1873, some 2,000 sheep grazed the turf down to playing height. Since then the ground has held a cycling track, a nearby rollercoaster and a huge corroboree, while its hand-operated scoreboard from 1911 has outlasted nearly every stand around it.
The South Australian Cricket Association formed in May 1871, and an act of parliament let it lease a strip of park land between North Adelaide and the River Torrens. By August 1872 workers had enclosed 12 acres, levelling the middle half by hand and sowing couch grass. Roughly 500 people watched the opening match, which pitted locally born Colonials against British-born players.
A grandstand opened in 1882, and the first Test followed in 1884, when the mound was raised. In 1885 about 20,000 people, around a sixth of the city, came to watch a corroboree performed by roughly 100 Aboriginal people from the Point MacLeay mission and from Yorke Peninsula. For a cycling meeting in 1900 the association carted thousands of loads of earth from the Torrens to bank a track around the field.
Architect F. Kenneth Milne's scoreboard began work in 1911. Other oddities pile up: souvenir hunters dug holes in the pitch after a 1948 Test, revealing that the grass had not been relaid since the late 1920s, and the first night-lighting towers of 1997 were built to sink into the ground until one collapsed. Stands came and went, named after local heroes such as George Giffen, Donald Bradman and the three Chappell brothers.
The biggest change came between 2012 and 2014, when a joint authority of the cricket association and the state football league rebuilt almost everything except the Northern Mound, the fig trees planted in the 1890s and the heritage scoreboard. Capacity rose to 50,083, a footbridge crossed the Torrens, and AFL football moved in. Even so, the record crowd dates from 1965: 62,543 for a Port Adelaide and Sturt grand final.
Source: Adelaide Oval
