Home Stadium
Loftus Versfeld Stadium in Pretoria, which was first used for sports in 1906, and rugby in 1908, when the site was known as the Eastern Sports Ground. The stadium was later renamed after Mr Robert Owen Loftus Versfeld, the founder of organised sports in Pretoria, and dedicated many years of his life to rugby union. Due to the Bulls exemplary record when playing at home, the stadium is often referred to as "Fortress Loftus" by South Africans. The stadium at its current configuration has a 52,000 all-seater capacity, and is shared with the Bulls. The stadium is expected to receive minor upgrades in the near future as it will be hosting matches at the 2010 FIFA World Cup. It will not be the first time this has happened and since 1948 there have been continuous improvements on the stadium:
1972 - Upper Eastern Pavilion 1974 - Lower Southern Pavilion 1977 - Main Pavilion 1984 - Northern Pavilion 1989 - South just as it is today 1995 - East just as it is today
The Blue Bulls represent the Limpopo province, the northernmost province in South Africa, as well as part of the Gauteng province, drawing all their players from these two areas.
During the 1920s the Pretoria Sub-union had not foreseen the growing need for fields, but in the first part of that decade, the Sub-union, in co-operation with the Municipality, systematically put their existing rugby fields under kikuyu. University and Boys' High followed their example in 1923, so that there were seven grass fields available in that year. The Railway Institute field at Berea Park was similarly grassed in 1924. At the end of 1928 there were ten grass fields in Pretoria. The Pretoria Sub-union also wished to improve the facilities at the Eastern Sports Ground. In 1923 the City Council commenced the building of a concrete stand which could accommodate 2 000 spectators. At the end of 1928, mainly as a result of the All Blacks tour, the Sub-union could show a record financial gain and used the profits to erect the changing-rooms and toilets they had waited for, for so long.
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Famous quotes containing the words home and/or stadium:
“Our instructed vagrancy, which has hardly time to linger by the hedgerows, but runs away early to the tropics, and is at home with palms and banyans—which is nourished on books of travel, and stretches the theatre of its imagination to the Zambesi.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“It’s no accident that of all the monuments left of the Greco- Roman culture the biggest is the ballpark, the Colosseum, the Yankee Stadium of ancient times.”
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