West Park Oval

West Park Oval

Location	Burnie, Tasmania
Coordinates	41°2′45″S 145°53′54″E
Owner	Burnie City Council
Operator	Burnie City Council
Capacity	13,000
Opened	Circa 1900
Tenants
Burnie Dockers Football Club - TSL Burnie Athletics Club

West Park Oval is an Australian Rules football, cycling and athletics venue located on the shores of Bass Strait in Burnie, Tasmania. It is the current home of the Burnie Dockers in the Tasmanian State League and previously in the NTFL and in the original TFL Statewide League.

History

West Park Oval was also home of the former Cooee Football Club (later renamed Burnie Hawks in 1987 and the former Burnie Tigers Football Club in the North West Football Union (NWFU) and later of the NTFL until both clubs amalgamated in early 1994.

The ground hosted five Tasmanian State Grand Finals between 1961 and 1978, including the final State Premiership decider held in 1978, and was also the site of some of Tasmanian football's most infamous matches.

During an NWFU match in 1936 a hurricane hit West Park in the final quarter of a match between Burnie Tigers and Penguin, and as players were unable to keep their feet in the blinding rain and wind, many lay flat in the mud as there was great panic in the crowd as the hurricane threatened to demolish the Main Stand. Burnie (finishing the match with eleven men on the field) won 8.10 (58) to Penguin (who finished with six men on the field) 2.5 (17).

Arguably, Tasmanian football's most controversial match was the 1967 State Premiership Grand Final between Wynyard and North Hobart, where hundreds of Wynyard fans invaded the field and tore down the goalposts as North Hobart's Dickie Collins went back to take a kick after the siren with Wynyard leading by one point. Umpires, players, team officials and police attempted to clear a path for Collins to take his kick, but Collins was eventually escorted from the ground under police protection, taking the match ball with him as a souvenir. The Tasmanian Football League declared the match a "no result" and withheld the 1967 State Premiership.

In 1996, visiting side Hobart became the first side in the TFL in more than 85 years not to register a goal in a senior match, managing a paltry 0.5 (5) against the Burnie Dockers and losing by 97 -points in atrocious conditions.

The lowest attendance ever recorded at a TFL final was recorded at West Park in atrocious weather conditions in 1997 where only 1,010 braved the elements to see the Burnie Dockers defeat Clarence 9.14 (68) to 2.6 (18) in the Qualifying Final (the two sides would meet again three weeks later in the Grand Final at North Hobart Oval and fight out a 38-goal thriller, with Clarence turning the tables on the hapless Dockers). It hosted AFL pre-season practice matches in the early 1990's, with over 12,000 attending the Carlton v St Kilda match in 1991.

West Park is also the home of the Burnie Athletics Club and the ground hosts theBurnie Gift each year.

In 1977 cyclist Danny Clark staged one of the most memorable moments in Tasmanian sporting history when he surged from the rear of the pack, 100m behind on the final lap to scream home to take out the 1977 Burnie Wheel before almost 15,000 screaming fans on 1 January 1977. The legendary call of the finish of the race by North West Coastal sporting identity Harold 'Tiger' Dowling is etched in Coastal sporting folklore with his simple call of "Danny Clark, Danny Clark, Danny Clark, Dannyyyyyyy Claaaaaaaark!!!"

West Park has two grandstands, the 1926 built Burnie Athletic Club Memorial Stand on the Bass Strait side of the ground, and an open stand on the opposite wing opened during the 1960's.