Our old Carlton home

Some of Hawthorn's finest ever football came during the years when the club called Princes Park home. Ashley Browne asks why the old ground is not more revered by Hawk fans.

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Watching the opening round AFLW game the other day between Daniel Harford’s mob and the Magpies, I was immediately struck by the pictures coming from the old Princes Park and in particular, a gap between the grandstands every bit as wide and noticeable as that between Alfred E. Neuman’s teeth.

The Pratt Stand had been demolished, replaced at this stage by a hole in the ground that will soon make way for a new training facility for the old, dark, navy Blues.

But to call it the Pratt Stand here at HI is being disingenuous, because it was born as, and will be forever remembered here, as the Hawthorn Stand.

The Pratt Stand (nee Hawthorn Stand) comes down.

Hawks inhabit post Glenferrie

For 17 years, Princes Park was Hawthorn’s home ground. Once the beloved Glenferrie Oval was finally deemed unfit for service in 1973, the Hawks were on the hunt for a new home ground and after considering Moorabbin, the Junction Oval and the nearby Victoria Park, the club opted to move in and share digs with the Blues at their long-time home.

Although to call it a ‘shared’ arrangement was a bit of a stretch. It was Carlton’s place and the Hawks moved in for 10 or so games a year playing in front of grandstands named for Ald Gardiner, George Harris and Robert Heatley. Initially, the Hawks used the Carlton rooms meaning champions such as Peter Crimmins, Don Scott, Leigh Matthews, Peter Knights were using lockers named for Ken Hands, Bob Chitty, Bert Deacon, John Nicholls, Serge Silvagni and other Carlton luminaries.

The opening of the Ald. Gardiner Stand in 1909.

It wasn’t until 1976, satisfied that the move to Princes Park was working out from a commercial perspective, that the club started to put down some roots and build a facility of its own.

Settling in

Glenferrie Oval would continue to be the club’s spiritual home for training and administrative purposes, and the social club still remained operational on the other side of Linda Crescent, but from 1977 when the new ski-jump inspired grandstand was opened, Hawthorn had its own enclave inside Princes Park, with spacious change rooms it didn’t have to share with Carlton, and a function room for presidents lunches and the like - the only part of the ground that wasn’t adorned with Carlton history and memorabilia.

Some pretty good Hawthorn teams used those change rooms. The Hawks won seven flags (1976, 1978, 1983, 1986, 1988-89 and 1991) while Princes Park was home. It was the ground where the Hawks spotted Geelong a 56-point lead in 1989 and still won the game.

One of the greatest games of all time.

And the games with Carlton were great, given that for much of the time the two clubs played their together, they were both winning flags. The rivalry went up even further in 1981 when David Parkin became coach of the Blues, moving office from the Hawthorn Stand, 50 metres around the corner to the bowels of the Heatley Stand.

Whenever the Hawks were the home team against the Blues, the ground managers decided to disregard health and safety regulations and let the social club members from both clubs pile in and share the facilities in the old George Harris Stand. The Carlton types didn’t enjoy having their turf encroached upon and the Hawk fans knew it and revelled in it, a bit like unwelcome guests at a wedding.

Very much a brown and gold home

For many rusted-on Hawthorn fans aged 40 and older, Princes Park was home. It was where the love affair with the brown and gold was forged, even if the ground and its surrounds screamed Carlton.

Matthews, Knights, Michael Tuck, Dermott Brereton, Robert DiPierdomenico, Gary Ayres, Russell Greene, Gary Buckenara and Rodney Eade, to name just a few, were at the peak of their considerable powers when the Hawks played at Princes Park.

John Kennedy Jnr once kicked five goals there against North Melbourne. In one quarter. So too did Peter Curran in one of those frenetic games against the Blues.

Peter Curran - how’s the excitement?

A few of the old-timers never really embraced it or the rituals that went with watching footy at Princes Park such as a pre-game pot at Naughton’s, the cheap car parking at Princes Hill Primary or a post-match feed at nearby Lygon Street. The terrace in front of the old press box, the popular haunt of academics from nearby Melbourne Uni when the Blues played, was more sparsely populated on Hawthorn days.

A special place in HFC history

Despite all the flags, and the fact that the club did well financially out of playing there despite often minuscule crowds, many felt that after leaving Glenferrie, the Hawks never had a true home ground until they moved out to Waverley, on a part-time basis in 1990 and then full-time from 1992. Never mind that it was owned and operated by the AFL.

The MCG, home since 2000, is of course, wonderful. But it is home to several other teams at the same time. UTAS Stadium has more of a Hawthorn home ground feel than the MCG ever has or will.

So perhaps it is time for there to be a greater appreciation for what Princes Park once meant to Hawthorn. Not much is physically left from the days when the Hawks played and dominated there, but for some of us, it feels like a place that we used to call home and the memories will always be great.

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Ashley Browne is a Hawks Insiders contributor, the author of A Season Like No Other: AFL 2020, and a senior writer at the AFL Record and SEN. Follow him on Twitter @hashbrowne.

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