Traeger Park (currently known under naming rights as TIO Traeger Park[3]) is a sports complex located in Alice Springs, Northern Territory, Australia, and is named after Alfred Hermann Traeger. The park was officially opened by Anne Catherine Smallwood (née Traeger) Alfred's younger daughter. The primary stadium in the complex caters for Australian rules football and cricket and has a capacity of 7200.[4] The complex also has a small baseball stadium.
Traeger Park has been hosting AFL preseason games since 2004 with the largest crowd ever at the ground occurring in 2007 between the Adelaide Crows and the West Coast Eagles. The 2011 NEAFL Grand Final was held at the ground as well. The game saw the Northern Territory Thunder defeat the Ainslie Tri-Colours 16.18 (114) to 13.14 (92).
The venue hosted its first ever AFL premiership match on 31 May 2014, with Melbourne shifting its home match against Port Adelaide to the venue.[6] Melbourne has scheduled one match per year at the venue since 2014, often to coincide with the league's Indigenous Round; the 2021 match was cancelled when travel into Northern Territory was restricted by the COVID-19 pandemic.[7]
Cricket
Traeger Park hosted its first first-class match in February 2015, a Sheffield Shield match between Victoria vs Queensland, owing to the unavailability of both states' usual home grounds during the 2015 World Cup.[8] It became a home-away-from-home for Victoria from then until 2017 whenever the Melbourne Cricket Ground was unavailable, due to no other Victorian venues being first-class standard at the time, and Victoria hosted the final of the 2016–17 Sheffield Shield season at the venue in March 2017.[9]
Dating to as early as 1988, the ground has a history of staging warm-up and tour matches for visiting international Test squads; and since 2004 it has hosted matches in the annual Imparja Cup, a limited overs tournament contested by state and territory teams comprising Indigenous Australian cricketers.[10]
The Northern Territory Government announced in 2002 that $4.2 million would be allocated to upgrading Traeger Park over a ten-year period. The floodlights will be upgraded from 300 lux to 800 lux which will allow televised AFL games. Future light towers will provide a lighting level of 1400 lux which will cater for televised international cricket.
A new 750 kva transformer and high voltage cabling reticulation is required to increase power supply to Traeger Park to cater for the new lights and grandstand facility. The grandstand/multi functional facility will replace the existing Ted Hayes Memorial Stand and is expected to consist of players change rooms and amenities, players dining rooms, umpires change room, first aid room, doctor/physio room, grandstand seating, multipurpose function room, kitchen, corporate rooms, press rooms and third umpire room.
^Young, Domonique (21 June 2013). "TIO to sponsor Traeger Park Oval"(PDF) (Press release). Alice Springs, NT: Alice Springs Town Council. TIO. Archived from the original(PDF) on 5 March 2015. Retrieved 25 August 2015.
