Toorak Park is a

cricket Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of eleven players on a field at the centre of which is a pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two bails balanced on three stumps. The batting side scores runs by striki ...

and

Australian rules football Australian football, also called Australian rules football or Aussie rules, or more simply football or footy, is a contact sport played between two teams of 18 players on an oval field, often a modified cricket ground. Points are scored by k ...

arena in the

Melbourne Melbourne ( ; Boonwurrung/Woiwurrung: ''Narrm'' or ''Naarm'') is the capital and most populous city of the Australian state of Victoria, and the second-most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Its name generally refers to a met ...

suburb of

Armadale, Victoria Armadale is an inner suburb in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 7 km south-east of Melbourne's Central Business District, located within the City of Stonnington local government area. Armadale recorded a population of 9,368 at the 2021 cens ...

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...

. It is the home ground of the

Prahran Football Club Prahran Assumption Football Club (), nicknamed The Two Blues, is an Australian rules football club based at Toorak Park in Orrong Road between High Street and Malvern Road, Armadale, in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. The club is currently in D ...

and

Old Xaverians Football Club The Old Xaverians Football Club is an Australian rules football club based in Kew, an inner suburb of Melbourne. The club was established in 1923 by alumni of Jesuit school Xavier College in Kew. The club is one of the most successful in the ...

of the

Victorian Amateur Football Association The Victorian Amateur Football Association (VAFA) is the largest senior community Australian rules football competition in Victoria. It consists of seven senior men's and women's divisions ranging from Premier to Division 4. In addition there ...

(VAFA) and

Prahran Cricket Club The Prahran Cricket Club is an Australian cricket club based in Prahran, an inner-city suburb of Melbourne, Victoria. They play in Victorian Premier Cricket, the highest competition in the state. The club was originally known as Hawksburn Cricket ...

, which plays in the

Victorian Premier Cricket Victorian Premier Cricket is a club cricket competition in the state of Victoria administered by Cricket Victoria. Each club fields four teams (firsts through to fourths) of adult players and usually play on weekends and public holidays. Matche ...

competition. The current capacity of the venue is 15,000. Toorak Park opened in 1893 when it was used by Hawksburn Cricket Club (later Prahran). The Prahran Football Club in the

Victorian Football Association The Victorian Football League (VFL) is an Australian rules football league in Australia serving as one of the second-tier regional semi-professional competitions which sit underneath the fully professional Australian Football League (AFL). It ...

began home matches at the venue in 1899, and used it as its home base until it left the Association after 1994. Old Xaverians moved there for the 1995 VAFA season and now share the oval with Prahran, which now also plays in the VAFA. Toorak Park hosted four VFA Grand Finals between 1935 and 1938, and served as the finals venue (including Grand Finals) for the VFA Division 2 from 1961 until 1984, except in 1967. The ground record attendance for a football match is approximately 17,000, for the 1938 VFA Grand Final between Brunswick and

Brighton Brighton () is a seaside resort and one of the two main areas of the City of Brighton and Hove in the county of East Sussex, England. It is located south of London. Archaeological evidence of settlement in the area dates back to the Bronze A ...

. During

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

, several venues used by the

Victorian Football League The Victorian Football League (VFL) is an Australian rules football league in Australia serving as one of the second-tier regional semi-professional competitions which sit underneath the fully professional Australian Football League (AFL). It ...

teams were commandeered for military use. The VFA was in recess during World War II, so the

St Kilda Football Club The St Kilda Football Club, nicknamed the Saints, is a professional Australian rules football club based in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, Victoria. The club plays in the Australian Football League (AFL), the sport's premier league. The club ...

, whose

Junction Oval Junction Oval (also known as the St Kilda Cricket Ground, or the CitiPower Centre due to sponsorship reasons) is a historic sports ground in the suburb of St Kilda in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. The oval's location near the St Kilda Junc ...

was one of the commandeered venues, temporarily moved to Toorak Park, using it as a home base in 1942 and 1943. also played one home match there in 1942. Altogether, Toorak Park hosted thirteen VFL matches. The highest attendance recorded for a VFL match was 11,000 at the St Kilda vs Richmond match, round 3 of 1943. In

1959 Events January * January 1 - Cuba: Fulgencio Batista flees Havana when the forces of Fidel Castro advance. * January 2 - Lunar probe Luna 1 was the first man-made object to attain escape velocity from Earth. It reached the vicinity of E ...

, the Prahran Council leased the ground to the

Victorian Rugby Union Rugby Victoria, formerly the Victorian Rugby Union, is a member and founding union of Rugby Australia. Within the state of Victoria, it is the governing body for the sport of rugby union. Rugby Victoria manages competitions for males and femal ...

on alternate Saturdays (when the Prahran Football Club firsts team was playing away) for the considerable sum at the time of £660, the Prahran Football Club paid only £60 to rent the ground for the whole winter. The VFA rules required that all clubs have access to the same ground throughout the winter, so that the seconds could play home when the firsts played away; as a result, Prahran was expelled from the VFA for that season. The football club secured a winter-long lease in 1960 and returned to the association.

References

{{AFL grounds Defunct Australian Football League grounds Sports venues in Melbourne Sport in the City of Stonnington Buildings and structures in the City of Stonnington