Ice hockey in Australia

The beginnings of ice sports in Australia are traced back to the evening of Wednesday October 12, 1904[10] during a carnival held at the Adelaide Glaciarium, the first ice rink built in Australia.

This important location for Australian ice sports began as a Cyclorama, which opened on Friday 28 November 1890 at 89 Hindley Street, Adelaide. On the evening of Tuesday September 6, 1904, the building was reopened after being remodeled by a new group called the Ice Palace Skating Company, owned by H. Newman Reid and referred to as the Glaciarium or Ice Palace Skating Rink.[11]

On the evening of Wednesday October 12, 1904 a match for what was called "hockey on the ice" was held during the carnival at the Adelaide Glaciarium. This game was not ice hockey, it was an adaption of roller polo to the ice using ice skates instead of roller skates.[12]

At the time this version of roller polo adapted to the ice was being played in Adelaide, ice hockey was already a well established sport and had been codified for almost 30 years. Though it was being called "hockey on the ice", it was not ice hockey.

The beginnings of ice sports in Australia can be linked to the Glaciarium in Adelaide but the birthplace of ice hockey in Australia was in Melbourne, Victoria and was the first time ice hockey had been played. Organised games of ice hockey in Australia began with the opening of the Melbourne Glaciarium on the afternoon of June 9, 1906,[13] at 16 City Road, South Melbourne Victoria.[14]

The first recorded organised game of ice hockey in Australia was on Tuesday July 17, 1906 and was between a Victorian representative team and the American sailors from the visiting American Warship the USS Baltimore. This game was held in the Melbourne Glaciarium, the Australian team were dressed in all white and the team from USS Baltimore wore white shirts with a large upper case black B on the front and center of the chest and grey trousers. The skill level of the Australians was not seen to be up to the level of the Americans but the game was hard fought and result of the game was a 1-1 tie.[15]

In 1909 state teams from Victoria and New South Wales first contested the Goodall Cup, which has since served continuously as the trophy awarded to the winners of the annual national competition (with hiatuses for the two World Wars, the closure of the Sydney Glaciarium in the late 1950s and for a single year in 1993),[8] thus making the Goodall Cup the third-oldest still awarded ice hockey trophy in the world,[16] and the oldest outside of Canada.[17]