The Sydney Rugby Union  has announced that North Sydney Oval will again host the Shute Shield Grand Final on Saturday August 26.

Last year, after six years at Concord Oval, the decision was made by the Board of the SRU to move the final game of the season to North Sydney.

The President of the SRU, David Begg says that the experience from last year was so outstanding the SRU wanted to not only replicate it, but improve on it.

“It is such a great, atmospheric ground and it stood up so well last year. We want to get as big a crowd as we can, so we want to make sure that we can make it as convenient a location as possible,” said Begg

“If you look at the teams who are in the running to make the grand final there is one ground that is pretty central to all of them, and that’s North Sydney Oval.”
Begg says the big crowd last year was a consideration in choosing the ground.

“A Manly and Warringah grand final is a possibility, it might even be possible the crowd figure from last year could be exceeded,” he said.

The Chief Executive of the NSWRU Andrew Hore, welcomed the decision to play all the games at the historic oval.

“Last year’s final had a great atmosphere and was supported by a big crowd with a game that came down to the wire. It was a great day for rugby and it’s looking like it will be even bigger and better this year,” Hore said.

All grade finals will be played on the Oval with fourth grade kicking off at 9:00am with the main game starting at 3:00pm.

“It will be a showcase day, not just with rugby but with entertainment that has a community rugby focus. It will be a great production for TV so people who can’t make it to the ground can still enjoy the full day watching it,” said the SRU President.

The bid to host the grand final went to tender, with all clubs invited to apply and some grounds, not always used for rugby, considered.

“We deliberately decided to put it out there. We wrote to all the clubs and we looked at rugby league grounds including Jubilee, Redfern, Leichhardt and Brookvale Ovals,” said Begg.

“Unfortunately a lot of them had a pre-booking on that day. We might have missed out on those grounds this year, but they all indicated they were very keen to keep the dialogue up for next year.”

While the first week of the final series will be home games for the teams that finished first, second and third, the second weekend, the qualifying final weekend, the venues are still to be determined.

“We’re asking all of the clubs who otherwise would host the games, to prepare a business plan for us to show us how they are going to showcase the game and if we’re not satisfied, we’ll maintain the discretion to move the game somewhere else,” said Begg.

“We’re showcasing the final games of what we think is the best club rugby competition in the world and therefore we don’t want it to be presented at anything less than its optimal level.”

The six team final series for premiership rugby begin on Saturday August 12, with the grand finals on August 26 while West Harbour will host the colt’s grand final the following day at Concord Oval.