CORRECT! Joint effort by yourself and AE there on question 2. Well done, lads.
Just 1b to go.
Belgrade (Red Star), Lisbon (Luz), Rotterdam (De Kuip) and Vienna (Ernst Happel) a start, and wherever the 1992 final was held in Sweden (can't remember without resorting to wiki). Stumped for the sixth.
Even with my limited knowledge of Rugby league, I noted on Sky there was always a live Friday night game. In my head it was always the Bulls. And this had me thinking about the possibility of a couple nights in the area hoping for a perfect alignment of Odsal Friday, Valley Parade Saturday/Sun, Park Avenue Saturday/Sunday and tracking down the archaeological remains on Horton Park Avenue at some point in-between. Unfortunately the final alignment of the cash and time to do this has been the real bugger. But, one day. One day.
The Bulls won't be troubling Sky's Friday night cameras for a while, they are on even harder times than their stadium and started the season with a big points deduction for yet another financial collapse.
'Let's develop Odsal into a National Stadium for Rugby League' comes around as often on RL boards as 'let's have a Six Nations' and 'let's do away with the salary cap' but it's never going to happen, not least cos the hardcore League audience is going to get rapidly tired of going to Bradford for every neutral venue cup game and international - nothing against Bradford but y'know.
Natural bowl dontcha know, you enter at the top of the terraces.
Belgrade (Red Star), Lisbon (Luz), Rotterdam (De Kuip) and Vienna (Ernst Happel) a start, and wherever the 1992 final was held in Sweden (can't remember without resorting to wiki). Stumped for the sixth.
Four out of six there, Walt. Outstanding. As ursus says, Sweden had the Euro 92 final at the Ullevi - which, off the top of the napper, had the 83 CWC final, home legs of the 82 & 87 UEFA Cup finals and all of the 2004 UEFA Cup final - and the 58 World Cup final (and the 98 CWC final) at the old Rasunda in Stockholm but, amazingly, neither Sweden nor Scandinavia as a whole has ever staged the ECCC/UCL final.
Shouldn't be long now, mind, with the Friends Arena passing the Europa League test.
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And yeah that's another Odsal-Hampden similarity - walk in off street level on two sides of Hampden and you only have a short climb for a huge drop. As it's a bowl on one hill crossing another, hitting the east stand requires a significantly higher climb before, again, starting the search for your seat at the back row.
Of course the stand most like Odsal is the West, the traditional "Rangers End" - a nickname hated by all non-Old Firm fans but I'm sure they'd allow the obvious link with the Bulls' financial problems. Every time I see another headline about their travails on SkySports News my first reaction is sod the alignment with City and Park Avenue - just get your arse down to Odsal before it vanishes altogether. And my second is empathy.
Stadium bagging is a selfish fetish.
If the Bulls vanish, I'll be on those message boards demanding Odsal be turned into a national stadium for Rugby League ...
Last edited by Alex Anderson; 10-09-2017, 22:40.
Reason: I'm not doing "so, in many ways with Odsal, I have 'been there'"
Clue to the last one: It's the only one of the six to have the same player scoring in it in both the Euros final and ECCC/UCL final. In fact, this player scored a brace in each final in this same stadium.
Last edited by Alex Anderson; 11-09-2017, 09:31.
Reason: Christ, my wording of the clue is harder to decipher than the answer
Correct, gents - that's five out of six on question 1(b).
Clue to the last one: It's the only one of the six to have the same player scoring in it in both the Euros final and ECCC/UCL final. In fact, this player scored a brace in each final in this same stadium.
(Zoltan Czibor being the only players to score in the same stadium in the final of both the World Cup and the ECCC/UCL; for Hungary in 1954 and Barcelona in 1961, losing both finals 2-3 at the Wankdorf, Berne)
There's a tangent to be had here - ECCC/CL final venues at which Rugby League has been played. Old Trafford and Wembley are mainstays in the RL calendar. The Millennium Stadium hosted the original Magic Weekends, the Challenge Cup final when Wembley was being rebuilt, and a double header in the RLWC in 2013. Parc des Princes hosted RLWC games in 1954, including the final. What these have in common is that RL was played at each of them before they first hosted the ECCC/CL final.
I believe (though it's hard to tell with anything related to RL in Russia) that Russia hosted a game at the Luzhniki Stadium, and if so it also pre-dated the UEFA bandwagon rolling into town.
After that I'm struggling - I don't think our lot have ever troubled the Olympic Stadium in Rome, but Red Star Belgrade run (or ran?) an RL team and its not inconceivable that they've allowed a domestic final, or Serbia international, to be played in the main stadium.
Near misses of sorts - the Challenge Cup and Magic Weekend have each been to Murrayfield, but never Hampden; and Catalan Dragons once played Warrington in the Olympic Stadium in Barcelona, and while the crowd was respectable it would have been somewhat lost if they'd played across town.
RU can claim a few more than those (at least four that I can think of), but that's their job not mine.
Edit - missed your full post above and just saw Alex's quote. I managed the below with a bit of checking. I got three of yours but missed the PdP, and added a couple of Women's CL final venues.
Wembley (five ECCC/UCL finals, and loads of RL Challenge Cup finals) Old Trafford (UCL 2003, Super League Grand Finals) Millennium Stadium (UCL final 2017, various RL including Challenge Cup finals 2003-05 and RLWC 2000) Craven Cottage (UWCL 2011 final, Fulham RLFC, 1980) Stamford Bridge (UWCL 2013 final, GB v NZ, 1908)
A near miss, I think: Nou Camp (two ECCC/UCL finals, presentation of Catalans Dragons, but no match(?))
Craven Cottage would be a great RL venue, too, except for the fact that I don't think the pitch is long enough. According to some data from a few years back it's the same size as Anfield, which had to have a below-specification length for the Four Nations final last year.
Fulham RLFC played at least one home game at Stamford Bridge too - my brother saw them play there the night before the 1983 Challenge Cup final.
I don't think we've made it into the new Cardiff City stadium (for what would be another UWCL/RL tick), but Ninian Park hosted the early 1980s Cardiff RL team, and various Wales international fixtures, so that's a near miss too.
Craven Cottage would be a great RL venue, too, except for the fact that I don't think the pitch is long enough. According to some data from a few years back it's the same size as Anfield, which had to have a below-specification length for the Four Nations final last year.
Old Trafford isn't ideal either, with short in-goal areas and sharp drop-offs - Australia and New Zealand weren't happy about it before and after the 2013 World Cup final.
I'm pretty sure that Catalans Dragons have never played in the Camp Nou.
They have played in the Olympic Stadium on Montjuïc, which was Espan(y)ol's home ground between their sale of the Sarria and their move to Estadi Cornellà-El Prat in the suburbs.
Mo
FC Barcelona also operated its own RL team in local Catalan competitions for a few years, which played the Mini Estadi behind the Camp Nou.
Barcelona Dragons, a gridiron team that played in both the World League of American Football and its successor NFL Europe, also played both at Montjuïc and in the Mini Estadi, but never used the Camp Nou.
BTW, five clubs from the WFAL and NFL Europe played at least one season in a stadium that hosted a European Cup Final.
Seeing as we've mentioned rugby league and I can never turn down an opportunity to shoehorn my club into these discussions... is the Racecourse the smallest stadium (current capacity approx. 10,500) to have hosted international football, European club football in all three main competitions and World Cup finals games in both codes?
The King Baduoin/Heysel. No-one wanted to say it. That's understandable. Only answer no-one got. Great team effort. So, just to get this out the way and let my tiny brain move onto Rugby and stuff:
Answers to the four-part question on European Cup/UCL final venues to have hosted other major events:
1 (a): Five final venues have also staged the final of the European Championships and the World Cup:
Bernabeu, Madrid (1957, 69, 80 & 2010 ECCC/UCL; Euro 64: 1982 World Cup)
Wembley, London (1963, 68, 71, 78, 92, 2011 & 2013 ECCC/UCL; Euro 96: 1966 World Cup)
Olympic Stadium, Rome (1977, 84, 96 & 2009 ECCC/UCL; Euro 68 & 80: 1990 World Cup)
Olympic Stadium, Munich (1979, 93 & 97 ECCC/UCL; Euro 88: 1974 World Cup)
Stade de France (2000& 2006 UCL; Euro 2016: 1998 World Cup)
1 (b): Six final venues have also staged the final of the European Championships only:
1 (c): Two final venues have also staged the final of the World Cup only:
Wankdorf, Berne (1961 ECCC & 1954 World Cup)
Olympic Stadium, Berlin (2015 UCL & 2006 World Cup)
2: Only two European Cup/Champions League final venues have never staged any game in the World Cup, Euros, IRB Rugby World Cup nor any Olympic Games event:
Estadio Nacional, Lisbon; 1967
Attaturk Olympic Stadium, Istanbul; 2005
Last edited by Alex Anderson; 11-09-2017, 17:50.
Reason: big-fonted, underlined, emboldened ... attention-seek much?
BTW, five clubs from the WFAL and NFL Europe played at least one season in a stadium that hosted a European Cup Final.
Got to be honest, beyond the Claymores I'd be struggling to name another four such clubs. London Monarchs played at Wembley didn't they? Definitely. Didn't they? Absolutely.
And there was a "(something) Rhinefire"? Was there? But the Rhinestadion in Dusseldorf was only ever used for the Cup-Winners' Cup final and Moenchengladbach's European games when the Bokelberg wasn't big enough - including the UEFA Cup final in 79 and 80. ... but limiting the name "Rhine" to the Rhinestadion says more about my shocking German geography than anything else ...
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