Canberra Stadium - History

History

Constructed in 1977 for the Pacific Conference Games, it also was the venue for the 4th IAAF World Cup in Athletics. At the latter meet, the still-current world record for the women's 400m for women was recorded by East German Marita Koch, and a world record for the women's 4x100m was set by East Germany and stood until the 2012 London Olympic Games.

In the late 1980s the running track was removed and re-located to the warm up stadium at the AIS site and in 1990 the Canberra Raiders Rugby league team started playing their home games at Bruce in 1990 after they became more successful.

The removal of the track meant that Australian rules football, more specifically the Australian Football League (AFL), could now be played at the ground and in 1995 the first AFL match for premiership points was contested between the West Coast Eagles and Fitzroy.

There were also a number of pre-season AFL games played at the venue, mostly featuring the Sydney Swans.

Also around this time, as an experiment, a cricket pitch was placed in the centre of the ground, and a day/night 1 day cricket match was played between 2 local teams before a small crowd. Regular cricket matches on the ground did not eventuate.

Further renovations occurred in 1997 in preparation for staging soccer matches as part of the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, which also in turn shrank the size of the playing field preventing any future Australian rules football games being played on the field. The final cost of the renovations was more than seven times what was originally anticipated by the territory government of the time, and the subsequent controversy ended the career of then Chief Minister Kate Carnell. During the lead-up, on 28 May 2000, unseasonal snow fell during a match between the Raiders and the Wests Tigers, the only such event in National Rugby League history, with the snow causing frost damage to the turf intended for the Olympic football tournament.

Olympic soccer in 2000 has initiated a stadium facelift converting the playing surface from oval to rectangular and bringing the crowd closer to the action. The only downside to this revamp is the stadium can no longer host AFL games. It is now an all-seater rectangular stadium with two main grandstands on either side of the playing field.

A 2008 Rugby League World Cup Group B game between Scotland and France was played at Canberra Stadium.

In 2009 there was a A-League bid from Canberra that, if successful would have seen a team play at the stadium starting with the 2010–11 season. However, the league chose to award second teams to (Western) Sydney and Melbourne. Ultimately, the second Sydney team never took the field due to financial issues.