under pressure to continue to retain the ground. In 1909, a Victorian Football League between Geelong Football Club and Collingwood Football Club was played on the ground in front of a large crowd. Local NSWAFL continued to use it as one of their main grounds on the 1910s and 1920s (as only two grounds available to the NSWAFL, the other being Hampden Oval), hosting premiership final games in 1910, 1914 and 1919. The Newtown Football Club folded in 1987 A new Newtown Football Club was reintroduced as a junior Auskick club in 1999. No longer able to use Erskineville Oval as their home venue, the junior club would instead choose a new home venue in Alan Davidson Oval, Sydney Park. Erskineville Oval also hosted AFL umpires who used the ground as a training facility. They did this in conjunction with the then training Newtown, sharing the ground. Rugby League Rugby league authorities began scheduling matches there from 1906 with second grade matches followed by first grade matches from 1907. Newtown club (established 1908) used it as the home for its first grade side from 1913 to 1954 before they moved training venues to their now home ground Henson Park. In this period, the Newtown club won two premierships competing in the NSW Rugby Football League. This was achieved in 1933 and 1943 where both games were played at the Sydney Cricket Ground. This move was due to the Metters field being repeatedly reported as too hard to play on as well as lacking the sufficient facilities for the team and supporters. As such, Newtown were moved to Erskineville Oval which provided more reasonable resources. The club later moved permanently to Henson Park in 1954 as Erskineville Oval could no longer provide adequate crowd amenities for the club's supporters. The last ever first grade rugby league match to be played at the ground was on 26 March 1954. In the game, Newtown played against Canterbury-Bankstown. Newtown won the match 16–13. The ground is currently a home ground for Souths Juniors as well as The Alexandria Rovers who play in the Sydney Combined Competition. More recently it has been used as a temporary training venue for the South Sydney District Rugby League Football Club. The shift of the professional club funded improvements to the oval enabling South Sydney to use it as a training. This was done from 2006 to the completion