About 1930 demand for sporting facilities began to increase and because the show ground now also had motorbike racing and greyhound racing a search began to find and fund a sportsground for Maitland.

Mercury files show first mention of this was on the Wednesday, September 28, 1932, when the Maitland United Rugby League Club called a public meeting at the Town Hall for the following Monday evening to discuss the project. 

The following Monday the Mercury backed the project and urged a large attendance at the meeting. 

At the well-attended meeting it was decided to select a committee to find a suitable site and ask the mayor to 

convene a public meeting to discuss the project. 

Even before any site was selected, a letter to the editor in March 1933 showed some dispute between Rugby League and Amateur Athletics over the use of the sportsground.

On April 27, the Mercury reported that the West Maitland Council had decided to ask the Unemployment Relief Council for a grant to cover half the cost of draining the old river channel and a 10-year loan at 3 per cent to cover the cost of the other half. 

On October 11, the Mercury reported that council had preliminary work carried out on the project for past 13 weeks under the Emergence Relief Scheme with an average of 425 men employed each week for a wages bill of £5523. 

This equates to £1 per man per week: living was tough in the great depression. 

The Mercury reported on May 22 that work was progressing well and a playing field might be ready early in the new year. 

But: “It will, of course, be some time before the work is completed with its provision for a miniature lake, a rustic footbridge across from nearly opposite Dr Hollywood’s residence, swimming baths and an additional sports area.” (Dr Hollywood’s residence is where the Shell service station is now.)

It seems that some residents may have been celebrated too extensively because a week later the Mercury reported there were plans afoot to turn West Maitland into an Olympic city with a cricket ground as big as Sydney’s to accommodate 80,000 people, three football fields and an Olympic swimming pool and diving pool with a grandstand to take 10,000, plus clubhouse, pavilions and refreshment rooms, a hall for entertainment and ample room for car parking. 

This was to be housed in the reclaimed old river bed in Horseshoe Bend, all work to be done by relief workers at a cost of £250,000. 

Dreams or nightmares aside, the real work carried on and on August 16, 1934, all were pleased with the progress and photographs, which council would keep, were taken of present works. 

Work carried on through the next 12 months with much discussion and dissension, sacking and reinstatement of workers, claims that the relief workers were not working hard enough, moves for a tennis court in project, a proposed suspension bridge from Lorn to Horseshoe Bend.

But another two years would pass before the sportsground was ready for use.

Although it had not been officially opened and the grass was too long for some races, the Maitland Amateur Athletics held a field day on November 20, 1937. 

It was also announced that a special completion would be held on the ground on March 26, 1938, to be attended by nine Sydney clubs and four Newcastle clubs. 

Work continued on and off during the next two years, with many inspections, discussions over a site for new baths, Potts Point (in old river bed), Cappers Paddock, (Carrington Street) or Maitland Park.

A claim in the Mercury on April 10, 1939,was that £60,000 had been spent on a project that had lain idle for nearly two years. 

There was a suggestion that when Prime Minster Menzies visited in June 1940 he could open the sportsground and there was much talk about a grass wicket for the oval. 

The Mercury reported October 27, 1939, that grass seed had been sown on the oval.  

Research up to the end of 1939 shows no record of an official opening.

By now the world was at war again but further research should turn up a date some time in 1940. 

My enduring memory of the sportsground is from the morning of Sunday, June 19, 1949, standing on the front verandah of our Raglan Street home and watching my uncle, Fred Hogan, carrying sandbags up the slope and placing them at the bottom of the tin fence to prevent flood waters breaking into Horseshoe  Bend. 

- Peter Bogan, Maitland and District Historical Society