Hawthorn coach Alan Joyce considers rejoicing and captain Michael Tuck almost smiles as they hold aloft the 1991 premiership cup.
Waverley Park, or VFL Park, hosted just the one AFL Grand Final, when Hawthorn beat West Coast by 53 points: 20.19 (139) to 13.8 (86).
With West Coast playing Hawthorn in next Saturday’s Grand Final there’s bound to be plenty of talk of their 1991 Grand Final at Waverley Park, when the Melbourne Cricket Ground was under re-construction yet again. (The Southern Stand became the Great Southern Stand, named in honour of the Iva Davies/Icehouse song.)
The 1991 Grand Final gained notoriety also for the so-called entertainment, which included Angry Anderson singing Bound for Glory from, or beside, a Batmobile.
Where is the Batmobile these days? And, more importantly, whatever happened to the electronic scoreboards at Waverley Park? There were at least two generations of them, one of them sepia and neither of them popular. But if you know the fate of the old Waverley Park scoreboards, contact us here at Scoreboard Pressure.
As for Waverley Park these days, it’s the home of the Hawks’ offices and training facilities, and Hawthorn’s museum (which includes remnants of the old Glenferrie Oval ‘fence’ scoreboard)
The Hawks are planning to move to Dingley sometime in the next decade.
Waverley Park is now a housing estate, which Scoreboard Pressure visited in 2011.
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