MC Labour Park

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is about the football ground. For the park, see Princes Park, Carlton.

MC Labour Park

Location	Princes Park, Melbourne
Broke ground	1892
Opened	1897
Closed	2005 (for AFL)
Demolished	incumbent
Owner	City of Melbourne
Operator	City of Melbourne
Surface	Grass
Construction cost	unknown
Architect	various
Former names
Princes Park Stadium (1897-1994) Optus Oval (1994-2006)
Tenants
Carlton Football Club
Capacity
35,000

With an all-seated capacity of 35,000, MC Labour Park (or Princes Park Football Ground) has been the home ground of the Carlton Football Club since the formation of the VFL/AFL in 1897, and is the single longest serving ground in the competition. Over the years, it has also hosted several other teams, including the Hawthorn, Fitzroy and Western Bulldogs teams. It has also seen service in the final series of several seasons, notably in 1945, when the VFL Grand Final was played there creating the record crowd for the ground of 62,986. The ground has also hosted most of the Victorian Football League Grand Finals in recent years.

Other sports, including soccer, cricket, boxing and rugby have also been played there. The ground was also host to a production of the musical Aida.

From the 1994 through to the 2005 Australian Football League seasons, the ground was known as Optus Oval in a naming-rights deal with telecommunications company Optus. This deal lapsed at the end of the 2005 season, and Optus declined to renew, citing the ground's lower profile now that AFL matches were no longer played there. In April 2006, it was announced that the naming rights for the stadium had once again been awarded, this time for a two year term, during which the stadium will be known as MC Labour Park.

In 2005, it was decided to discontinue the use of the ground for AFL home and away games. A farewell AFL game was played at Princes Park on Saturday May 21, 2005. The game was contested between Carlton and Melbourne. It was the last of the suburban grounds in Melbourne to be used in the AFL. Carlton lost by only 18 points against the fit Demons team, even though the final siren sounded and carlton losing....no one played the Demons theme song instead all of the die hard fans sang thier hearts out to the carlton club song

Carlton retains the use of the ground for training, administration and social club purposes, and in March 2006, the AFL touted the purchase of Princes Park from the Carlton Football Club to make a return as an AFL venue as an alternative to competitive balance fund payments to the club.

On June 7, 2006 it was announced that MC Labour Park would receive a AUD$15.7m redevelopment to provide the Carlton Football Club with elite training and administration facilities. The proposed redevelopment will provide state of the art facilities exclusively for Carlton including:

Gymnasium, weights and stretch areas
4 lane, 25 metre indoor heated pool
Medical offices and rehabilitation/treatment areas
Football Administration offices
Lecture theatre and meeting rooms
Change room facilities

For the 2006 NRL season onwards MC Labour park is also the administrative headquarters for the Melbourne Storm rugby league club. The club relocated to the temporary home whist plans were being made for the construction of a new purpose built rectangular stadium next to the current Melbourne Storm home ground, Olympic Park Stadium.

In January 2006, Graham Smorgon, president of the Carlton Football Club prepared a AUD $67 million redevelopment proposal involving the demolition of most of the stands, returning much of the ground to parkland and the establishment of club training facilities and community centre.^[1] The proposal was controvertial as it was presented to the media before local authorities and was made at a time when the club is struggling under the weight of heavy financial debt. Cynics branded it as an attempt by an arrogant Carlton board to rally member votes.

The appointment of Richard Pratt as President has renewed speculation that it may again be used by the Carlton Football Club as a home ground in the future, although it remains unlikely.