Windy Hill

Capacity: 10,000 (approx)
Record Crowd: 43,487 – Essendon vs Collingwood (1966)
Home Team:

• Essendon (VFL)
• Essendon Cricket Club
• Essendon Bowls Club
• Essendon Croquet Club
• Essendon District Football League

Windy Hill (officially known as Essendon Recreation Reserve) is an Australian rules football and cricket ground located in Napier Street, Essendon, a northwestern suburb of the Melbourne metropolitan area.

Windy Hill is most notable as the former home base of the Essendon Football Club in the Australian Football League; the club used the ground for home matches from 1922 until 1991, and then as its primary administrative and training base until 2013. It is the current home ground of the Essendon Cricket Club in the Victorian Premier Cricket, and the Essendon reserves in the Victorian Football League.

During the days as Essendon’s home ground, Windy Hill had the reputation of being a violent place for players, and was the site of several ugly incidents, The most famous of these was the “Battle of Windy Hill”, when a brawl broke out between players, team officials, trainers, spectators and police at half-time during a match between Essendon and Richmond on 18 May 1974. Another famous incident is when Hawthorn player Leigh Matthews broke the behind post after running into it during play in a 1982 game.

The dimensions of the grassed surface of the arena are 164.5 metres (180 yd) long and 139.8 metres (153 yd) wide (the playing field is slightly smaller after the boundary lines are marked). The long axis of the ground runs east-west.