Athletic Ground (Maryport)
Maryport, Cumbria, England
Athletic Ground (Maryport), Maryport, England — opened Not confirmed, 5 rugby league games hosted, home of Cumberland (county representative rugby league side); Maryport RLFC (founder club of Cumberland's Northern Rugby [Football] Union competition from 1898).
Ground facts
| Opened | Not confirmed (No precise founding/opening date, capacity, or current-day status could be found for this ground. A 1967 Pitchero club-history note describes a British Legion social club building added at the site, confirming continuity of the ground's name and location well beyond the 1901-1911 matches recorded here, but nothing more recent addresses whether the ground still exists today.) |
| Home club | Cumberland (county representative rugby league side); Maryport RLFC (founder club of Cumberland's Northern Rugby [Football] Union competition from 1898) |
| Games hosted (rugby league, on record) | 5 |
| Top recorded crowd | 6,000 (6,000 for Cumberland's 2-5 defeat to the touring 1911 Australian Kangaroos -- independently confirmed via Wikipedia's 1911-12 Kangaroo tour of Great Britain article.) |
| Years used | 1901–1911 |
| Location | Maryport, Cumbria |
Name history
Rugby league history
This is a genuinely distinct venue from the differently-named, plural "Athletic Grounds" (Rochdale/Tamworth) entry already published elsewhere in this directory, which was found to suffer from serious data contamination -- confirmed via Rugby League Project's own separate venue slug for each ground. Every one of this Maryport ground's five recorded matches checks out as a genuine Cumberland county representative fixture (against Yorkshire twice, Cheshire, Lancashire, and touring Australia), fully consistent with the small but real Cumberland rugby league heartland of the era, which also included Workington, Whitehaven and Barrow. Maryport itself was a founder club when the Northern Rugby Football Union arrived in Cumberland in 1898, reportedly the competition's first champions, and won the first Cumberland League Champions trophy in 1901. The ground's top crowd, 6,000, came on 22 November 1911 when Cumberland lost 2-5 to the touring Australian Kangaroos -- independently confirmed by Wikipedia's 1911-12 Kangaroo tour article with an identical date, score and attendance.
Sources
Data last verified: 11 August 2026.
← Rugby League · Champions list · All-time records · Grand Final results · World Cup · All competitions · Teams · Players