With the opening of Parramatta Stadium in Sydney's West and then the Sydney Football Stadium in the East, St George Stadium's role was reduced to hosting National Soccer League matches.
The ground never again hosted another international game or major event.
The real decline began with the relegation of St George from the National Soccer League at the end of the 1990/91 season into the NSW State Leagues. The club has never returned to national prominence.
The club fell victim to the costs of operating in the National Soccer League, and the decline of its Hungarian support base.
With older generations passing on, and few new Hungarian migrants arriving in Australia and joining the fan base, St George attempted to re brand to broaden its community appeal. Ultimately it was unsuccessful.
It was also caught up in the ongoing decline of the National Soccer League, with interest in Australian Football diminished by the repeated failures of the national team to achieve international success.
The rise and fall of St George Stadium in Barton Park is a metaphor of the National Soccer League – a competition developed in the halcyon days of ethnic based football clubs supported passionately, and practically, by their first generation migrant communities who found great meaning, belonging and community in a new land through their clubs.
With slowing numbers of European migrants, and the evolution of the Australian Rugby League and Australian Football League competitions into competitions of national prominence, the NSL was unable to sustain itself at the national level, leaving behind small clubs with great pasts in State Leagues, and in St George Budapest’s case, the deteriorating relic of St George Stadium.
The National Soccer League struggled on until its collapse in 2004.
