Maine Road
Manchester (Moss Side), Greater Manchester, England
Maine Road, Manchester (Moss Side), England — opened 25 August 1923, 15 rugby league games hosted, home of Not a rugby league club's home ground — used as an occasional large neutral venue for Northern Rugby League's end-of-season Championship Final and a handful of other big fixtures.
Sourcing caveat: An initial Wikipedia-table extraction had suggested only 3-4 Championship Finals were played here; a direct check of this site's own match-by-match records recovered the full, much larger total of 11 finals given above, matching this site's own 15-match count for the venue exactly once the 1987, 1989 and 1991 fixtures are included.
Ground facts
| Opened | 25 August 1923 (Opened as Manchester City F.C.'s football ground; the club's last match there was 11 May 2003, and the stadium was demolished in 2004, with the site redeveloped for housing.) |
| Home club | Not a rugby league club's home ground — used as an occasional large neutral venue for Northern Rugby League's end-of-season Championship Final and a handful of other big fixtures |
| Games hosted (rugby league, on record) | 15 |
| Top recorded crowd | 75,194 |
| Capacity | Peaked at roughly 88,000 by 1935; final all-seater capacity 35,150 (2003) |
| Challenge Cup Finals hosted | 11 |
| Floodlights installed | Installed 1953 |
| Surface | Grass, 107m x 71m in its final configuration |
| Years used | 1939–1991 |
| Location | Manchester (Moss Side), Greater Manchester |
Name history
- Maine Road — 1923-2004
Rugby league history
Manchester City F.C.'s football ground for 80 years, occasionally hired out as one of the largest available neutral venues in the North West to host rugby league's biggest annual non-Wembley fixture — the Northern Rugby League Championship Final — hosting it in near-unbroken succession from 1938/39 to 1955/56 (eleven finals across eighteen seasons), during an era when the final rotated among large football and rugby league grounds. It later hosted two further Championship fixtures in January 1987 (Oldham v Featherstone and, the following night, Warrington v Barrow) and two Challenge Cup ties: a 1989 semi-final (Wigan 13-6 Warrington) and a 1991 first-round tie (Swinton 8-18 St Helens).
Primarily a football stadium (Manchester City F.C., 1923-2003); its record attendance of 84,569 was set at a 1934 FA Cup tie, a football rather than rugby league occasion.
Historic Test matches, Cup & Grand Finals hosted
- 13 May 1939 — Salford 8-6 Castleford, Northern Rugby League 1938/39 Championship Final
- 18 May 1946 — Wigan 13-4 Huddersfield, 1945/46 Championship Final
- 21 Jun 1947 — Wigan 13-4 Dewsbury, 1946/47 Championship Final
- 8 May 1948 — Warrington 15-5 Bradford, 1947/48 Championship Final
- 14 May 1949 — Warrington 12-13 Huddersfield, 1948/49 Championship Final
- 13 May 1950 — Wigan 20-2 Huddersfield, 1949/50 Championship Final
- 12 May 1951 — Warrington 11-26 Workington, 1950/51 Championship Final
- 9 May 1953 — St Helens 24-14 Halifax, 1952/53 Championship Final
- 8 May 1954 — Warrington 8-7 Halifax, 1953/54 Championship Final
- 14 May 1955 — Oldham 3-7 Warrington, 1954/55 Championship Final
- 12 May 1956 — Halifax 9-10 Hull, 1955/56 Championship Final
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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