Veterans Memorial Stadium
Long Beach, California, United States of America
Veterans Memorial Stadium, Long Beach, United States of America — opened 1950, 3 rugby league games hosted, home of overwhelmingly a gridiron football and soccer venue — Long Beach City College (since 1950), Long Beach Poly High School, Long Beach State/CSULB football (1955-1976, 1983-1992), and the Long Beach Admirals (Continental Football League, 1967); no rugby league club was ever tenant — three one-off exhibition fixtures.
Sourcing caveat: A third Australia vs New Zealand match from the same 1954 tour (28 November, final score 28-18, attendance 4,554) was played at the Los Angeles Coliseum, a different venue in a different city, and is correctly excluded from this venue's tally. Wikipedia gives the 1987 match's attendance as 12,439, against the 12,349 recorded by Rugby League Project (matching our directory exactly) — an unresolved single-digit discrepancy between the two sources.
Ground facts
| Opened | 1950 (Owned and operated by Long Beach City College.) |
| Home club | overwhelmingly a gridiron football and soccer venue — Long Beach City College (since 1950), Long Beach Poly High School, Long Beach State/CSULB football (1955-1976, 1983-1992), and the Long Beach Admirals (Continental Football League, 1967); no rugby league club was ever tenant — three one-off exhibition fixtures |
| Games hosted (rugby league, on record) | 3 |
| Top recorded crowd | 12,349 |
| Capacity | 11,600 today (7,000 bench bleachers plus 4,600 fixed chairback seats) — a 1950s-era figure was not found, and the ground was very likely natural grass with no permanent floodlighting during the 1954 matches, unlike its current artificial SprinTurf surface (installed 2004) and floodlight towers |
| Test matches hosted | 2 |
| First rugby league match | 26 November 1954 — Australia vs New Zealand, abandoned after 6 minutes due to heavy fog, no official result recorded; replayed the following day (27 November 1954), Australia won 30-13, attendance 1,000 — both part of a short, loss-making US exhibition series organised as the Australian and New Zealand touring sides returned from that year's Rugby League World Cup in France |
| Years used | 1954–1987 |
| Location | Long Beach, California |
Name history
- Veterans Memorial Stadium — 1950–present, also colloquially "Veterans Stadium," "Vets Stadium" or "The Vet" — no formal name change found
Rugby league history
Veterans Memorial Stadium's three rugby league occasions sit 33 years apart. The 1954 double-header (one match abandoned to fog, replayed the next day) was part of a short, financially unsuccessful attempt to showcase the code in Southern California as the touring Australian and New Zealand sides passed through the US on their way home from the 1954 World Cup in France — a specialist rugby league historian records the promoting committee lost over $6,000 on the venture. The 1987 fixture was a one-off, additional State of Origin "exhibition" game staged in the US to promote the representative concept; its official status has long been disputed within Australian rugby league — all authorities count it for individual player caps and statistics, but not all bodies (Queensland Rugby League among them) have historically included it in official team records.
Primarily a gridiron football and soccer venue for Long Beach City College, Long Beach Poly High School and (at various points) Long Beach State; undergoing a roughly $250 million redevelopment as of 2026.
Historic Test matches, Cup & Grand Finals hosted
- 27 November 1954 — Australia 30-13 New Zealand, replay after the fogged-off first attempt (1,000)
- 6 August 1987 — New South Wales 30-18 Queensland, 1987 State of Origin Exhibition Game (attendance 12,349, our recorded top crowd) — independently the venue's best-attended rugby league occasion
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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