Melbourne Sports Facilities

Hey Everybody,

     Today we went on a tour of the Melbourne Cricket Grounds, The National Sports Museum, and the Rod Laver Arena.  Our day started off with a tour of the National Sports Museum, which was established in 2008, but the cricket museum had always been there.  The National Sports Museum holds past Olympic memorabilia for Australia starting from the 1920 Olympic Games in Anvers through the 2012 Olympics in London.  During our time at the museum we read up on the history of Australian sports through watching videos on small screens or just reading all the writing in the plaques.  Our second part of the museum tour we got to play simulation games of sports like Netball, Archery, Biking, and Australian Rules Football.   

     

     After the museum we went of to tour the Cricket grounds with our tour guide Lesley.  Lesley had great knowledge of the history of the cricket grounds and she even threw in a few things about United States history in relation to cricket and Australia.  From Lesley we learned that the Melbourne Cricket grounds is the oldest and biggest ground in Australia.  Did you know that the Melbourne Cricket Grounds held a record capacity crowd of 130,000 back in 1959 and that the stadium now holds 85,000 sitting and 5,000 standing?  When you think about the members of the Melbourne Cricket Grounds they have 100,000 loyal members paying $600 a year, but have a waiting list of 217,000 with a 22 year waiting period!!!  

     Our final stop of the day ended at the Rod Laver Arena, which hosts the Australian Open.  While at the arena we visited the Men's Locker Room where we got to see the lockers that Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic used in the 2013 Australian Open.  Walking down the Walk of Champions was awesome as we saw photos of the previous Australian Open Champions and you come to realize that you are walking down the same hall way that the greatest tennis players in the world have walked through.  Our tour guide told us how in 2005 that was the first time ever in Australian Open History that the final was played at night.  He also informed us on how players can be fined up to $20,000 dollars for not doing an interview.  Going into the interview room was cool as we all took turns sitting at the interview table and taking pictures as if we were athletes.  

To learn more about our amazing time in Melbourne come back tomorrow to see what Alex Mullen has to say.

 

   -Josh Benner