North Hobart Oval is a sports venue in North Hobart, Tasmania. Formerly used primarily for Australian rules football widely regarded as the traditional home of Australian football in Tasmania. However since the 1950s it has also become one of the main soccer venues in Tasmania.
The ground holds the record crowd for Australian rules football in Tasmania, also the highest for any football code in the state: 24,968 for the 1979 TANFL Grand Final between Clarence v Glenorchy.
History
North Hobart Oval started its existence as Hobart Town's brickfields in 1844 before becoming a convict women's housing site, an immigration depot and an invalid persons' depot before closing in 1882 whereby the land became a rubbish dump until it was acquired for construction of a football stadium in 1921. The first official match to take place on North Hobart Oval was a TFL match between Lefroy and New Town on 6 May 1922, the match was won by Lefroy (9.8.62 to 7.13.55) before 1,000-people.
Football
North Hobart Oval became League Headquarters for the TFL/TANFL/TFL Statewide League in 1922 and remained so until the League was disbanded in 2000. The ground hosted a total of 74 Tasmanian Football League Grand Finals between 1922–1999 and also hosted the Tasmanian State Grand Final on 20 occasions between 1923 and 1975, also hosting the Winfield Statewide Cup Grand Final in 1980. The final Tasmanian Football League match to be held at the ground was the 2000 SWL Preliminary Final between North Hobart and North Launceston (trading as the Hobart Demons and Northern Bombers at the time) which resulted in a narrow win to the Northern Bombers. After pressure from Northern TFL clubs, notably the Northern Bombers, the TFL scheduled the 2000 Grand Final to be played at Launceston's York Park, marking the first (and ultimately last) TFL Grand Final to be held away from North Hobart Oval since 1921.
The first official radio broadcast of a Tasmanian Football League match took place at North Hobart on 9 May 1931 when former Cananore player "Dinah" Green commentated on the match between North Hobart and Lefroy for radio station 7ZL. After the disbandment of the TFL, the Southern Football League made the ground its Grand Final venue in both the Premier & Regional competitions and has done since 2000, it also hosts the Old Scholars Football Association Grand Final each year. The Tasmanian Devils VFL side also played its Southern home fixtures at North Hobart from its inception in 2001 until AFL Tasmania moved the team to Bellerive Oval in 2005 where its Centre Of Excellence was established and it could more adequately host corporate functions.
Australian football carnivals
North Hobart Oval has hosted three Australian National Football Carnivals. The first was in August 1924, which was won by Victoria before an official attendance of 60,705 for the entire carnival. In 1947 a total of 67,271 attended the carnival which was played in deplorable conditions - including one match where a dog ran onto the ground and buried a saveloy in the mud in the centre of the ground. Victorian once again triumphed, this time on percentage. The 1966 Carnival was the last to be played in Tasmania. A total attendance of 91,347 were present to view the matches played and once again, Victoria took the title defeating Western Australia in the final.
Interstate and state of origin matches
The ground hosted numerous intrastate, interstate and state of origin clashes in its history. Some of the most memorable are Tasmania's triumph over Western Australia by 2-points in 1970 and the three State Of Origin matches held there in 1989 where 12,342 saw Tasmania hold Victoria to halftime before Victoria raced away to win. 24 June 1990 saw Tasmania finally get its revenge on Victoria, with a crowd of 18,653 packing North Hobart Oval, Tasmania raced away in the last quarter before a roaring crowd to record a 33-point win, its first over Victoria since 1960.
And in 1991 a peculiar draw from the Australian Football League (AFL)scheduled the match to be played at 11am on a Tuesday morning (a working day in Hobart) - despite this, 14,086-people turned out to watch Tasmania fall agonisingly short after leading the Victorians for much of the game, the Victorians rushing home with a late flurry to win by 12-points. Subsequently, through the rest of the 1990s Tasmania went on to defeat the South Australia, the Western Australia and the Victorian Football Association (VFA), all at North Hobart Oval.