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| Location | North Sydney, New South Wales |
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| Opened | 1867 (Redeveloped 1929, 1931, 1983, 1985) |
| Owner | North Sydney Council |
| Operator | North Sydney Council |
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| North Sydney Bears (NSW Cup) (1908-present) |
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North Sydney Oval is a multi-use sporting facility primarily used for rugby league (as home ground of the North Sydney Bears),rugby union and cricket as home of North Sydney Cricket Club the found has also been used for Australian rules football and football (soccer). The ground is located in the south-west corner of St Leonards Park, North Sydney.
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North Sydney Oval has been the home ground of the North Sydney Bears since their inception in 1908. The club currently plays in the NSWRL Premier League and still attracts spectators to home games at the oval. Only two grounds have hosted more first grade rugby league matches.
In 2004, South Sydney Rabbitohs experimented with playing two home games at the ground. The first match between Souths and Manly-Warringah Sea Eagles attracted 14,855 spectators.
The ground record crowd of 23,089 was reached in 1994 for a regular season premiership match with North Sydney's local rivals Manly-Warringah Sea Eagles.
Rugby league great Ken Irvine has a stand in the oval named after him.
The New South Wales Blues cricket team play regular Sheffield Shield, ING Cup and Twenty20 Cricket matches at the Oval. Most recently, the oval hosted the final of the inaugural Twenty20 domestic knock-out cup competition between NSW Blues and Victoria Bushrangers. It also plays home to the North-Sydney Grade club.
Rugby union has been played at the St Leonards Park complex since the late 1890s with the North Shore Football Club (known as the 'Pirates') playing matches there. In 1900 North Shore merged with the Wallaroos club to form Northern Suburbs Rugby Club.
The stadium is also home to the Sydney Fleet, who are taking part in the inaugural Australian Rugby Championship.
North Sydney Oval was the home ground for Northern Spirit FC, a now defunct club of the defunct Australian National Soccer League. In its inaugural season in 1998, an average of 15,000 spectators attended Northern Spirit FC games at North Sydney Oval including 18,985 for their first game against Sydney Olympic FC. It is generally accepted that North Sydney Oval is a poor venue for football. The ground is hard and compacted to cater for cricket, and for many months there is a cricket wicket in the middle of the ground. Northern Spirit FC paid to have a removable cricket wicket installed, but the ongoing costs of this were prohibitive. Northern Spirit also obtained government funding for half of the new lighting installed, while NSFC paid the other half. This was a major success for the club as before the new permanent lighting was installed, the older lighting was not bright enough to allow television broadcasts of night games. For 2 years Northern Spirit had hired a large amount of lighting for each game to get around the problem.
The Australian Football League club, Sydney Swans, has played a number of matches at the oval against both Sydney Football League opposition and an annual exhibition match against fellow Australian Football League team Essendon.
In 2005 the Sydney Swans played a pre-season friendly match against Essendon in front of a crowd of 9,654.
In the 2006 match, a full strength Essendon (89) defeated the young outfit of the reigning premiers (71) in front of a crowd of 8,461.
In 2007, the Collingwood replaced Essendon in what has become a regular pre-season friendly against the Swans over the past five years, while Essendon travel north to Darwin to take part in the Indigenous All-Stars game. In the 2007 match held on Friday 16 February, Sydney (66) defeated Collingwood (51) in front of a crowd of 9,560.[1]
Since 2003, North Sydney Oval has been used during evenings in January and February as a venue for outdoor cinema on an inflatable screen.
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