Poladi Stadium

The name on the gate has changed once. What opened in Rustavi in 1948 as Metallurg was owned by the town's steelworks. A change of sponsors in 2009 gave it the name it carries now, Poladi, after the company that took over.

Rustavi sits roughly twenty kilometres from Tbilisi, close enough that the stadium has never had to carry a city on its own the way provincial grounds sometimes do, but far enough to keep its own club and its own crowd. FC Rustavi plays its home matches here, on an artificial surface laid down in the old district of the city, off Chavchavadze Street.

There is no grand redevelopment in its history, no chase after a tournament bid that reshaped the place — just a ground that has stood since the postwar years under the ownership of the municipality, doing the job it was built for under two different names.