The story of the ingenious ‘reversible’ grandstand at the MCG
The 1876 stand was designed with extraordinary reversible seating so spectators could watch either the cricket in the sacred turf of the MCG, or the increasingly popular AFL on Yarra Park.
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Had the founders of the Melbourne Cricket Club glimpsed through time at the towering colossus their humble ground would become, their jaws would surely hit the pitch.
Now with a capacity of more than 100,000 spectators, grandstands like sculpted mountains and light towers reaching to the heavens, the MCG is one of the finest stadiums in the world.
But the ingenious design effort applied to its pavilions is nothing new.
In the late 1800s, as Australian Rules football was blossoming on a patch of turf right next to the MCG, one of the most unusual and effective feats of grandstand engineering was accomplished.
The 1876 stand was designed with extraordinary reversible seating - a mechanism that could flip the whole thing from the front of the stand to the back - so spectators could watch either the cricket in the sacred turf of the G, or the scrappy and increasingly popular football on the ground of Yarra Park.
The reversible grandstand, which eventually met a tragic end, marked a spot in time when Melbourne was equally captivated by two codes of sport.
Early football
A thought bubble from Melbourne Cricket Club member and captain of the Victorian cricket team, Tom Wills, in led to the game that has become like a religion for Melburnians.
In a letter to Bell’s Life in Victoria and Sporting Chronicle, Wills articulated the need for a sport to keep cricketers fit over the colder months.
Just a few weeks later scrappy games of football, based on rugby and believed by some to have been inspired by the Indigenous game of Marngrook, were taking place in the open spaces around Richmond.
By 1858 the Melbourne Football Club had been established and codified games were organised.
But football games were only occasionally played on the MCC’s cricket field.
Most were played on a rectangular field at Yarra Park, just to the north of the MCG.
Football was ballooning in popularity and just as the MCC needed more permanent structures for the cricket, so too did football spectators desire a comfy place to sit and watch the emerging sport.
An ingenious design
Since the first humble members’ pavilion built in 1854, which seated about 60 people, there have been 18 grandstands constructed around the MCG.
By the 1870s plans were being drawn up for the first permanent grandstand on the ground’s northern side.
Architect and former Scotch College student George Browne dreamt up a fantastic design.
It was a grandstand open on both the northern and southern sides, with seat that could be fitted to view one side or the other.
Fixed to a giant see-saw-like structure, a team of workers could quickly dismantle the seating, reverse the stand and set it up again, depending on whether the cricket was being played on the MCG or football was played on Yarra Park.
When it was completed in 1876, it worked wonderfully.
As an 1877 newspaper article described:
“The floor of the stand is suspended on hinges along the middle line, so that once certain movable supports have been withdrawn from beneath the top of the incline, the floor can be sloped in the opposite direction, to enable the public to look down upon football play instead of upon an empty cricket ground.”
It also meant the MCC could charge entry to the grandstand and raise money.
It was otherwise impossible to sell tickets to the football at Yarra Park because the ground and spectator standing room were on council land.
The grandstand was a hit for several years.
But the degradation of the football ground at Yarra Park meant the Melbourne Football Club hardly used it by 1884.
During that winter the reversible grandstand wasn’t turned.
Later the same year a fire swept through the grandstand and destroyed it.
To accommodate spectators for an upcoming summer English cricket tour, a temporary structure was built with a seating capacity of about 2000.
Later a new permanent building, which became known simply as ‘The Grandstand’ with fixed seating was constructed in 1885 and expanded in 1897.
It was torn down in 1955 to make way for the Olympic Stand, which had a capacity of more than 40,000.
The Great Southern Stand, with a capacity of about 50,000, was built between 1991 and 1992, and was recently renamed the Shane Warne Stand to honour the cricket legend who died in March.
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