Alec Inch Oval
Mount Isa, Queensland, Australia
Alec Inch Oval, Mount Isa, Australia — opened not confirmed, 8 rugby league games hosted, home of home venue of the Mount Isa Rugby League (MIRL) competition; as of 2025 only two senior men's clubs remain active there, Townies and Wanderers.
Sourcing caveat: The oval's naming connection to politician Alec Inch is a plausible inference from the shared name and location, not confirmed by any source. Playing surface type was not found in any source. No Foley Shield final was confirmed hosted here despite Mount Isa clubs winning that competition eight times.
Ground facts
| Opened | not confirmed (No source gives a construction date; the earliest confirmed rugby league use is 1964, but that is first recorded use rather than a stated opening date.) |
| Home club | home venue of the Mount Isa Rugby League (MIRL) competition; as of 2025 only two senior men's clubs remain active there, Townies and Wanderers |
| Games hosted (rugby league, on record) | 8 |
| Top recorded crowd | 2,465 |
| Capacity | 4,000 (single-sourced) |
| Test matches hosted | 2 |
| Floodlights installed | yes, though reliability has been questioned — a May 2024 club match was abandoned mid-game when the lights failed |
| First rugby league match | 15 May 1964 — France 23-14 North West Queensland (attendance 2,465, our recorded top crowd) |
| Years used | 1964–2024 |
| Location | Mount Isa, Queensland |
Name history
- Alec Inch Oval — the only name found — plausibly, but not confirmed as, named for Alexander "Alec" Inch (1915-1994), a local Queensland Labor MLA for the area
Rugby league history
Mount Isa's central rugby league venue, significant chiefly for two international touring-side matches in the 1960s (France 1964, Great Britain 1968) against a composite North West Queensland representative side, when regional Queensland was a regular stop for rugby league tourists. More recently it has hosted Queensland Cup fixtures (2012, 2016, 2024) and a heavily publicised NRL pre-season trial between North Queensland Cowboys and Brisbane Broncos in 2013, billed as the North West's first NRL match, though that trial does not appear in Rugby League Project's competitive-match ledger for the venue and its reported crowd (variously given as 4,000 or just "hundreds") is not part of our recorded top-crowd figure. Locally, the ground remains the home of a shrinking Mount Isa competition, with administrative and floodlight problems reported in recent years.
Historic Test matches, Cup & Grand Finals hosted
- 15 May 1964 — France 23-14 North West Queensland (2,465)
- 17 June 1968 — Great Britain 33-5 North West Queensland (2,385)
Pre-dates the site's structured match-by-match records for these competitions, so listed here as sourced facts rather than linked match pages.
Sources
Data last verified: 11 August 2026.
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