I follow neither cricket nor AFL, but I booked the Adelaide Oval Tour as someone who has an admiration for unique buildings and likes photographing buildings even more, and I came out of it two hours later having had one of the better mornings of my one week in Adelaide.
Yes, the Adelaide Oval tour is worth booking, and you do not need to follow either sport to enjoy it. Allow around two hours, arrive ten minutes before your start time at the south gate help desk, and expect a guided walk through the changing rooms, out onto the boundary, up through the honour boards and into the media centre.
The Adelaide Oval sits in the parklands in North Adelaide, on the bank of the River Torrens, a footbridge walk from the city centre. It is South Australia’s main stadium, home ground to both the state’s AFL clubs and the venue for Test cricket, one day internationals and Big Bash matches, along with the concerts that fill it to the rafters.
The ground is owned by the state government and run by a management authority set up by South Australia’s cricket and football bodies. Capacity is around 53,500, and there is no roof over the playing surface, though the stands are well covered.
It is routinely described as one of the most beautiful cricket grounds in the world, and having stood on the boundary I would not argue. The northern edge has kept its grassed hill and its heritage Moreton Bay figs rather than being concreted over, and the view out that way takes in the spire of St Peter’s Cathedral.
The ground was established in 1871, and has hosted Test cricket since 1884. The Bodyline series reached its notorious climax here in the 1930s. Bradman played some of his best innings on this square.
In 2014, the stadium entered redevelopment, giving the ground contemporary stands and facilities, building was done around the old features rather than through them. That is why the hill, the flags, and the 1911 manual scoreboard are all still here.
And then, when it reopened in 2015, it staged the first day-night Test match in the history of the game, played with a pink ball.
Adelaide Oval is essentially three stadiums stacked on top of each other. There are the bones of the 1800’s ground, the additions of the 1900’s, and the 2000’s redevelopment layered over the top.
The tour I did started at 11:00 AM, with a meeting point at the south gate entrance help desk for 10:50 AM. Turn up at the ten minute mark rather than on the hour, because the group gathers and moves off promptly.
The groups are small enough that you can ask questions without shouting over anybody, and helps bond the groups over the albeit short amount of time you’re together. Our guide knew the ground inside out and was clearly passionate about it, and that really came across in his presentation. A stadium tour lives or dies on whoever is walking you around it.
Tours run to a fixed timetable and sell out around major fixtures, so book ahead rather than turning up hoping for a spare place. If you’re travelling solo, this is one of the easiest activities in Adelaide to slot into a morning, and nobody bats an eyelid at a solo booking.
When I turned up for the tour, there were two guides and the group was split in half. One tour went one way, and the other went another. Other than that, there wasn’t anyone else in the stadium.
Budget two hours from arrival to finishing up. Ours ran close to that, and I did not once find myself checking the time. If you are building a day around it, an 11:00 AM tour leaves you free for lunch on site and an afternoon elsewhere in the city.
The tour opens in the Bradman Collection, which is the museum dedicated to Sir Donald Bradman. There is a lot of material here, and if you already know your cricket history you could happily lose an hour to it on its own.
If, like me, you do not, this is where a good guide earns their keep. Ours turned what could have been a room of glass cases into an actual story, and I left knowing considerably more about Bradman than I did walking in. You are given enough time to look properly rather than being marched through.
Unfortunately I didn’t get any pictures inside the Bradman Collection, but found this interesting video of Sir Donald Bradman & what the old stadium used to look like.
From the Bradman Collection, our tour guide took us through the stands, and over to the scoreboard. The old scoreboard is heritage listed, which means it cannot be touched or modernised, and has been operating in essentially the same way for over a century.
In a stadium that has been rebuilt around it, a working analogue scoreboard is an odd and lovely survivor. It is also the reason Adelaide Oval photographs so much better than most modern grounds. You get the clean lines of a contemporary stadium in one direction and something from another era entirely in the other.
The scoreboard reads best from the eastern side of the ground with the grassed hill in the foreground. Late morning light works well if you are on one of the earlier tours.
You go inside the old scoreboard, and are able to see how the insides work, which is quite special.
From the scoreboard, the tour guide will then take you into the Sheffield Shield room, then the changing rooms. Being in a professional changing room is always slightly strange, and this one is no exception.
Then, you walk out through the player’s race onto the edge of the pitch to a piped round of applause. It is unashamedly a gimmick, and it completely works. Standing at the boundary looking up at the stands from ground level gives you a proper sense of the scale of the place.
From there you head up into the stands themselves for a view from the seats, which is where the layering of the ground becomes obvious.
The back half of the tour covers the cricket honour walls, the main function room, the AFL honour walls, and finally the media centre.
The media room was a highlight I did not expect. It is a proper broadcast facility and seeing it empty, with the ground laid out through the grass, is quite something. The honour boards are worth slowing down for even without any allegiance to either sport, because they read as a straightforward history of Australian sport written on a wall.
Yes, 100%. If I had to review the tour, I’d give it 9/10! The only reason it isn’t a perfect 10, is that I arrived knowing almost nothing about cricket or AFL, and I still thoroughly enjoyed it. I found the architecture and redevelopment of the grounds fascinating.
The Adelaide Oval tour only costs £15 ($28.60 AUD) per person, and it is well worth it for an hour and a half. Ours did over-run by half an hour, but simply because our tour group was asking so many questions and the tour guide was passionately answering questions back.
Even though my knowledge was limited, there were people in my group who did in fact know a lot about Cricket and AFL, so the questions were flowing. Some had even flown in from Brisbane, just to visit the Adelaide Oval!
The Adelaide Oval tour takes you through the building & its history; The RoofClimb takes you over the top of it. The Adelaide Oval RoofClimb is a 2 hour guided walk over the grounds, with views of Adelaide & the coast during the day, twilight and night time slots. It was the first stadium roof climb of its kind and it has become one of Adelaide’s signature experiences.
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