Carlton Recreation Ground

About

Princes Park (known under naming rights as Ikon Park) is an Australian rules football venue located inside the Princes Park precinct in the Melbourne suburb of Carlton North. Officially known as the Carlton Recreation Ground, it is a historic venue, having been Carlton Football Club's VFL/AFL home ground from 1897.

At its highest usage, the ground had a nominal capacity of 35,000, making it the third largest Australian rules football venue in Melbourne (after the Melbourne Cricket Ground and Docklands Stadium). It hosted three grand finals during World War II, with a record attendance of 62,986 at the 1945 VFL grand final between Carlton and South Melbourne.

After 2005, when the ground hosted its last Australian Football League (AFL) game, two stands were removed and replaced with an indoor training facility and administration building, reducing the capacity. The venue reached capacity (24,500) for the inaugural AFL Women's match between Carlton and Collingwood in 2017. Subsequent renovations and modernisation of the ground and surrounding precinct have reduced Ikon Park's capacity to approximately 13,000.

Adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA)。Photography via Wikimedia Commons.