The Sydney Cricket Ground is one of the finest sporting arenas in the world. A wonderful home for the Sydney Swans, and a first-class mix of history and tradition operating in tandem with the wants and needs of the modern sporting environment.

But along the way, through a journey of more than 200 years, it has been a lot of different things to a lot of different people from the moment in 1811 when NSW Governor Lachlan Macquarie claimed a plot of land extending south from what is now Oxford Street to the current site of Randwick Race Course.

Known as the second Sydney Common, it was part sandhills and part swap. Situated on the fringe of the city. it was used as a rubbish dump through the 1850’s until in 1851 part of the Common was given to the British Army for use as a garden and a cricket ground for soldiers.

Originally known as The Garrison Ground, it replaced Hyde Park as the city’s primary sporting venue when Hyde Park, the colony’s first sporting and facing venue, was dedicated as public gardens in 1856.

It hosted Sydney’s first cricket Test in 1882, and at various times in various shapes and forms it was home to athletics, tennis, baseball, rugby league, rugby union and cycling,

In 1885 the first inter-colonial tennis match between NSW and Victoria was played there, and after the official name of the Sydney Cricket Ground was adopted in 1894, it  hosted Australia’s first motor race on 1 January 1901 when seven motorised tricycles powered by one-cylinder engines and imported from England raced around the concrete cycle track that ringed the main arena.

Then, 115 years ago today, on 23 May 1903, the SCG hosted the first VFL match for premiership points between Fitzroy and Collingwood.

It wasn’t the code’s first venture into the NSW capital. In August 1881, six months before the first cricket Test, an Australian football match had been played between NSW and Victoria. And in July 1883 South Melbourne played three games in a week against local opposition.

But the game between the then Fitzroy Maroons and the Collingwood Magpies is regarded by the AFL as the League’s first official match at the SCG. As of today, the first of 393.

It was Round 4 of the seventh season of a VFL competition comprising South Melbourne, Carlton, Collingwood, Essendon, Fitzroy, Geelong, Melbourne and St Kilda that had been established in 1897.

The then VFL had hoped to attract 10,000 fans but were delighted when a reported crowd of 18,000 saw Fitzroy beat Collingwood 7.20 (62) to 6.9 (45).

In a report published the following Monday in The Argus newspaper, it was suggested that Sydneysiders found “something in the game”.

Under the headlines: FOOTBALL IN SYDNEY; INTRODUCING THE AUSTRALIAN GAME and SUCCESSFUL EXHIBITION MATCH, The Argus also reported: “Leaving the pavilion, the players had a magnificent reception.

“The pace and dash infused into the play, and the brilliancy and the accuracy of the kicking were a revelation, quickly convincing many sceptics ... that it has many advantages over Rugby,” the paper reported.

Significantly, the Fitzroy players wore numbers on the back of their jumpers as a one-off experiment before numbers were introduced for all players from all teams from the start of the 1912 season.

The first official game didn’t feature South Melbourne, but there were two players, one in each team, who played that day on what was to become the club’s home ground 79 years later.

Jack Incoll, a 24-year-old in the Collingwood side and listed among his side’s goal-kickers, had played four games for South in 1899. He later went on to play in the Magpies’ 1902 and 1903 premiership sides.

And Bert Sharpe, a 25-year-old in the Fitzroy side who counted Fitzroy’s 1898 premiership among his 99 games for the club from 1897-1903, would later play 17 games for South in 1904-05.

The Fitzroy Annual Report later suggested the match represented a “red-letter day for Australian football” and added: “It now is felt that the game is placed on a firm basis and the part taken by Fitzroy will, your committee feel confident, will be a matter of extreme satisfaction.”

South Melbourne played Fitzroy in an exhibition match at the SCG on 24 June 1905, but it wasn’t until Round 12, 1980, after one game in 1952, two in 1979 and two earlier that season, that the Swans played their first official match at the SCG.

It was 15 June 1980. South lost to Geelong 12.12 (84) to 21.21 (147) as Graham Teasdale, the 1977 Brownlow Medallist, played his 100^th game in a side coached by Ian Stewart and captained by Barry Round.

The South Melbourne side that day, in alphabetical order, was David Ackerley, Russell Campbell, Wayne Carroll, Rod Carter, Stephen Eather, Bernie Evans, Mark Fraser, Kevin Goss, Francis Jackson, Max Kruse, David McLeish, Peter Morrison, Tony Morwood, Paul Morwood, John Roberts, Barry Round, Greg Smith, Michael Smith, Graham Teasdale, Stephen Wright.