Melbourne Cricket Ground: a shrine, a citadel, a landmark

Perhaps no city in the world is better tuned to the needs of the sporting spectator than is Melbourne. Towering over the city that has it all is the behemoth of Australian sporting venues, the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG), the stadium which is invariably deemed the "spiritual home" of at least two major sports, and regularly plays host to many more besides. It has size. The ground's website lists its capacity as "around" 100,000, the approximation accounting for a small section of standing room which is used at the discretion of individual event organisers. It has history. In 1877, James Lilywhite's touring XI from England played a Combined Australia XI, formed from players from Victoria and New South Wales on the site of the then 20-odd-year-old ground. The fixture later became acknowledged as the first official Test match. They definitely started something there. Now it even has comfy seats, too. As much as 55 per cent of the ground was rebuilt ahead of the 2006 Commonwealth Games, reducing the capacity but improving the spectator experience. The seats in the new stands were 80 per cent larger than the ones that were replaced, with cushioning in the corporate areas. And they think of everything else the viewer could possibly need, too. When a Ladies Day was introduced to attract extra patrons on a weekday during the 2005 Test against South Africa, the hosts provided literature for novices so that they could better enjoy their day at the cricket. It is difficult to cram enough superlatives into one sentence to do justice to "The G", as the locals know it, although Greg Baum, the respected Australian journalist, managed to do so with panache. "The MCG is a shrine, a citadel, a landmark, a totem," Baum wrote in The Age , a Melbourne daily, in 2003. "It is to this city what the Opera House is to Sydney, the Eiffel Tower to Paris and the Statue of Liberty is to New York; it symbolises Melbourne to the world. It inspires reverence." Reverence, excitement, awe … and plenty of nerves, according to many of those who have been able to tread the turf. When he was still a student, Cameron Hotton, who now plays for the Dubai Heat in the AFL Middle East, played at the MCG for Collingwood, the best-supported team in Aussie Rules football. "I was only playing in the reserves, but there were 80,000 people, probably more, in the ground by the time we came off that day," Hotton said. "It was nerve-racking playing in front of that many people, even though you were aware they were still coming in for the main game. "After the game I met up with a load of people I knew through footy circles, who said they had been watching, and that was when it really hit home." The ground may be owned by the Melbourne Cricket Club, and have a long and illustrious history in that game, but its association with Aussie Rules is just as deeply ingrained. When the stadium was included in Australia's National Heritage List in 2005, the federal treasurer, Peter Costello, described it as "the spiritual home" for Aussie Rules football. The biggest attendance for a sporting event there was for the football code, when 121,696 flocked to see the 1970 Grand Final between Collingwood and Carlton. "The MCG is a Valley of Greatness, a colosseum in which ferocity and the will to compete were the measure of a man – and this is how I will remember it," was the poetic assessment of Kevin Sheedy, the former coach of Essendon. At the SportAccord convention in Dubai in April, Melbourne was again named the best place in the world to stage a sporting event. Among the reasons the organisers gave were the city's "excellent facilities, strong government support, exceptional legacy planning, not to mention fabulous weather". All perfectly accurate, except maybe the latter. It might seem a little rich for an Englishman to complain about the weather, but how difficult is it to plan what clothes to wear to the cricket in Melbourne? Is it shorts and flip-flops or thermals and a cardigan? Melbourne folk talk about having four seasons in one day. At the very least, four seasons in one Test match is definitely accurate. On the first day of the Melbourne Ashes Test of 1998, the travelling supporters complained bitterly that they had journeyed halfway round the world to the kind of frostbite they could have stayed home for. By the time Dean Headley had bowled England to an unlikely victory a few days later, the colour of the sun-blemished faces among the majority of the Barmy Army was way past lobster. It was on its way to beetroot. The match was a classic, and the venue has not been short of those since the lieutenant-governor Charles La Trobe granted 10 acres of what was then called the Police Paddock to create the cricket oval that became the MCG. Other sporting venues in Australasia 2. Sydney Cricket Ground It is not even the biggest cricket ground in Sydney, but its rich history and features assures its status as a top cricket stadium. 3. Hauraki Gulf The idyllic waters around Auckland, New Zealand, has made the city mad for the sport of match-race sailing. 4. Flemington Racecourse Site of horse racing since 1840; up to 120,000 spectators have lined the course for the annual Melbourne Cup 5. Eden Park, New Zealand Auckland's top venue stages cricket as well, but is best-loved for being the setting for the lone All Blacks World Cup victory, in 1987 6. Stadium Australia Currently known as the ANZ Stadium, its finest moment was Cathy Freeman's 400m win at the Sydney Olympics in 2000 7. Rod Laver Arena The main tennis court of the Australian Open is the third Melbourne venue on the list – an indicator as to why it was recently voted the world's best sports city 8. Adelaide Oval The ground in South Australia is currently undergoing renovation, but always makes the final lists of world cricket's most scenic venues Follow us

Melbourne Cricket Ground: a shrine, a citadel, a landmark

In the first of The National's great sporting venues series, Paul Radley looks at spiritual home of cricket and Aussie Rules football.