With no viable options in Sydney, Melbourne will host the opening Bledisloe Cup Test of 2020, with Rugby Australia confirming the Wallabies and All Blacks will meet at Marvel Stadium on 8 August.
The men’s match – the first Rugby Championship match of the season in Australia and new coach Dave Rennie’s first outing on home soil – will form one half a double-header, with the Wallaroos meeting the Black Ferns on the same day in a women’s Test.
Sydney’s $2bn stadium development plans mean ANZ Stadium and Allianz Stadium will both be out of action when next year’s series kicks off, bringing the Bledisloe to Melbourne for the first time since 2010.
It is the second year running that Sydney will not host a Bledisloe match and the first time in the series’ history that Australia hosts two games with neither in Sydney. The third game of the 2020 series has already been confirmed for Brisbane’s Suncorp Stadium on October 17.
Rennie, who was last week confirmed as Michael Cheika’s successor, will officially take charge of the Wallabies in July, and he will come up against another newly-installed coach in Melbourne, following the end of Steve Hansen’s All Blacks reign post-World Cup.
Australia will also play Ireland in a two-Test series, on 4 July at Suncorp Stadium and 11 July at the SCG. Those matches will be the first internationals under Rennie.
Rugby Australia boss Raelene Castle said it represented a new era for the national team, which had a disappointing recent quarter-final World Cup exit. “I think it’s a fresh start, I think that’s the excitement,” Castle said. “We don’t quite know what any coach is going to bring and that creates the anticipation.
“The Australian public are going to want to get to know Dave Rennie and what he’s about and the style of rugby that he’s going to play so by the time we get to this Test match we will have seen a little bit of that.”
Australia and New Zealand have played each other in the Victorian capital four times previously since the first game was held at the MCG in 1997. Two further Tests were hosted at the MCG, and the fourth, nine years ago, at Marvel Stadium.
