Alpine Energy Stadium, originally called Fraser Park, is a sports stadium in

Timaru Timaru (; mi, Te Tihi-o-Maru) is a port city in the southern Canterbury Region of New Zealand, located southwest of Christchurch and about northeast of Dunedin on the eastern Pacific coast of the South Island. The Timaru urban area is home to ...

, New Zealand. It is currently used mostly for

rugby union Rugby union, commonly known simply as rugby, is a close-contact team sport that originated at Rugby School in the first half of the 19th century. One of the two codes of rugby football, it is based on running with the ball in hand. In its m ...

matches. The stadium is able to hold 12,000 people or 12,500 with temporary seating.

History

The ground was originally called Fraser Park, and was renamed

Alpine Energy Alpine Energy Limited is an electricity distribution business based in Timaru, New Zealand. The company own and operates the electricity distribution network in South Canterbury. The company's distribution network consists of of lines, supplyi ...

Stadium in 1995. That same year, overhead floodlights were installed for night games at the park.

Tenants

The stadium is the home ground of the South Canterbury Rugby Team, who play in the

Heartland Championship The Heartland Championship competition, known for sponsorship reasons as the Bunnings Warehouse Heartland Championship, is a domestic rugby union competition in New Zealand. It was founded in 2006 as one of two successor competitions to the countr ...

Stadium

The stadium had two main stands until April 2016 the east stand was closed permanently due to damage. Otherwise, the stadium is surrounded by embankment.

Temporary site for games from Christchurch

In the wake of the February

2011 Christchurch earthquake A major earthquake occurred in Christchurch on Tuesday 22 February 2011 at 12:51 p.m. local time (23:51 UTC, 21 February). The () earthquake struck the entire of the Canterbury region in the South Island, centred south-east ...

, the Christchurch

Super Rugby Super Rugby is a men's professional rugby union club competition involving teams from Australia, Fiji, New Zealand, and the Pacific Islands. It previously included teams from Argentina, Japan, and South Africa. Building on various Southern Hem ...

team, the

Crusaders The Crusades were a series of religious wars initiated, supported, and sometimes directed by the Latin Church in the medieval period. The best known of these Crusades are those to the Holy Land in the period between 1095 and 1291 that were in ...

, moved two

Super 15 Super Rugby is a men's professional rugby union club competition involving teams from Australia, Fiji, New Zealand, and the Pacific Islands. It previously included teams from Argentina, Japan, and South Africa. Building on various Southern Hem ...

seasonal games (versus the

Bulls Bulls may refer to: *The plural of bull, an adult male bovine *Bulls, New Zealand, a small town in the Rangitikei District Sports *Bucking bull, used in the sport of bull riding *Bulls (rugby union), a South African rugby union franchise operated ...

and the

Blues Blues is a music genre and musical form which originated in the Deep South of the United States around the 1860s. Blues incorporated spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads from the Afr ...

) to Alpine Energy Stadium.

References

Rugby union stadiums in New Zealand Sport in Timaru Multi-purpose stadiums in New Zealand Sports venues in Canterbury, New Zealand {{NewZealand-sports-venue-stub