Waverley Park

Waverley Park (also and originally called VFL Park) is an Australian rules football oval and former large-scale stadium located in the south-east Melbourne suburb of Mulgrave. The first venue to be designed and built specifically for Australian rules football, it served as a neutral stadium for Victorian-based Victorian Football League/Australian Football League (VFL/AFL) clubs upon its opening in 1970. During the 1990s, it became the home ground of both the Hawthorn and St Kilda football clubs. It ceased to be used for AFL games after the 1999 season following the opening of Docklands Stadium. It was then used as the training and administration base for Hawthorn from 2006 to 2025. The seating capacity is now 2,000, down from a peak of 72,000–90,000. The stadium's playing surface was 200 metres (660 ft) long and 160 metres (520 ft) wide, making it the biggest in the AFL. In 2026, it was reported that the Melbourne Football Club was considering moving its training and administrative department to Waverley Park on an interim basis, before a planned move to a new facility at the Caulfield Racecourse Reserve. The majority of the site was sold to Mirvac in 2001 for residental housing; with some portions retained by the AFL and administered by the local council since 2022. The main grandstand and oval, the two remaining aspects of the stadium that were not demolished, were listed on the Victorian Heritage Register on 7 September 2000 in recognition of their historical, social and architectural significance.