Ernie Smith Reserve

Ernie Smith Reserve carries the name of a man who served twice as mayor of Liverpool. Southern Districts Raiders FC , formerly known as Southern Bulls, calls it home, and Liverpool Olympic FC uses it too.

The site splits its identity by sport. Hockey has the better-defined setup: three international water-based synthetic pitches run by the Moorebank/Liverpool District Hockey Club. Football's surface has a murkier history — grass by tradition, with talk in 2015 and again in 2019 of converting to synthetic turf for year-round play, though nothing in the record confirms whether that conversion was ever finished.

What the reserve has hosted matters more than what it looks like on paper. Back in 2009, when scheduling clashes at Marconi Stallions' home ground left the Southern Districts junior finals without a venue, Ernie Smith Reserve stepped in as the stand-in host.