Lightfoot Green
Preston, Lancashire, England
Lightfoot Green, Preston, England — opened 1960, 3 rugby league games hosted, home of Preston Grasshoppers R.F.C. (rugby union); Blackpool (the club now known as Blackpool Panthers) used it as a temporary rugby league venue for three home fixtures in February-March 2005.
Ground facts
| Opened | 1960 (1960 is when Preston Grasshoppers R.F.C. (rugby union) settled at the ground; no exact month or day is documented, and this is a rugby-union opening date, not a rugby-league one -- the ground's rugby league use was a brief, one-off tenancy in early 2005.) |
| Home club | Preston Grasshoppers R.F.C. (rugby union); Blackpool (the club now known as Blackpool Panthers) used it as a temporary rugby league venue for three home fixtures in February-March 2005 |
| Games hosted (rugby league, on record) | 3 |
| Top recorded crowd | 290 |
| Capacity | 2,250 (2,000 standing plus 250 seated), the rugby-union-era figure -- not confirmed as the exact configuration for the 2005 rugby league fixtures |
| Floodlights installed | Yes -- two of the ground's four pitches have match-quality floodlights, though it is not confirmed which pitch was used for the 2005 rugby league matches |
| Surface | Grass in 2005 (the ground was not converted to an artificial 3G surface until 2015-16, well after these matches) |
| Years used | 2005 |
| Location | Preston, Lancashire |
Name history
Rugby league history
Lightfoot Green is fundamentally a rugby union venue, the long-time home of Preston Grasshoppers R.F.C. Its only recorded rugby league use was three home fixtures for Blackpool's newly professional club in February-March 2005 -- two National League Cup ties against Rochdale and Oldham, and a National League Two match against Keighley that drew the ground's top recorded crowd of 290. A minor open question remains: secondary histories of the Blackpool club describe Bloomfield Road (Blackpool F.C.'s stadium) as their settled 2005 home, with a move to groundshare at Lightfoot Green raised only as a rejected board proposal later that year -- yet Rugby League Project's own results log, independently re-confirmed by direct fetch for this entry, clearly records three games actually played here in that window. The likeliest explanation is a brief stopgap tenancy before the Bloomfield Road arrangement took effect, but no source explicitly reconciles the two accounts, so this is disclosed rather than resolved.
Sources
Data last verified: 11 August 2026.
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