Waverley Park

So this is the scenario.

And then there's VFL Park as the league's ground.

So there's lots of grounds in play here.

And with these suburban grounds, there's problems that they are council run, council owned, and six months of a year, they have to hand the keys over to the cricket club.

VFL.

From 1981.

VFL Park.

We're going to come back to VFL Park.

Cash grab, strategic grab too, because it just so happened that in 1970...

They just opened VFL Park.

They wanted content.

They wanted content for VFL Park.

So there was obviously a financial return, and they were getting more money from playing at VFL Park.

But by having two finals in the one day, at that time as it was...

They had to play at another ground other than the MCG and they had to play at VFL Park.

Glorious.

So here's a selection of memories and then you can detail it for us.

Carlton and Essendon semi-regularly played an Anzac Day fixture at VFL Park during the 80s.

Remember attending a couple of them.

But in that era, there was ad hoc fixturing of Anzac Day games and teams.

In 1986, they played a double header on Anzac Day.

Really?

So Essendon played Carlton at VFL Park, 68,000.

Fantastic.

The other telltale sign in all of this, which is sort of forgotten.

So VFL Park, which is the league's ground, they had had lights since the late 70s.

They played the night series there, which we've talked about the night series previously.

But they never played a game for premiership points there during this period under lights.

They wanted to move to the MCG.

But the problem was, how do you fit North Melbourne to play at the MCG when we only play on Saturday afternoons? We already have two teams playing there.

We have games at VFL Park.

So there's actually a log jam of where do you play footy.

See the future there's ground rationalization.

So one of the, one of the issues is Collingwood moving from Victoria park to VFL park or something akin to that.

There's playing matches.

Instead of playing on Saturday afternoons, we're going to play from Fridays through to Mondays, day and night.

We're probably not going to have this breakaway comp that we're just going to go and start ourselves.

There's an issue with grounds.

They acknowledge that getting VFL Park will be probably impossible and getting the MCJ will be very hard.

So that's going to be the main sticking point here.

Yeah, magnificent big game play.

If they're playing, and no, apologies to you, if they're playing Melbourne at VFL Park, he might have tall kicks and not do very much, but then put him up against Carl Neresed in a big game at the MCG and he would invariably start.

My

father was an Italian immigrant in the 60s, knew nothing about Aussie rules.

So they say, we'll go on, Jim, you go and do your thing.

We'll worry about who's playing at VFL Park next week.

So this is where it starts.

He thinks, well, there's got to be some money to be made somewhere for the game offshore.

Barry Crocker sang a song called Come On The Cats, had it as a kid, and played it religiously in the early 80s on my parents' record player.

And with regards to football songs, what was the name of the football song that incorporates Mike Brady standing on the small scoreboard at the Wellington Road end of VFL Park used in Sevens Big League? We need to check

on that one.

Would that have been one day in September? Could have been.

My very first concert I ever went to was Jon Bon Jovi, and I went with my mum, and it was out this way.

It was at Waverley Park, and I just, I remember as a kid, you never forget your first concert.

No.

It was unreal.

I love Jon Bon Jovi.

It was the first, I know I harp on it, but it was the first concert I ever went to.

It was at Waverley Park here in Melbourne.

I went with my mum and we had the time of our lives.