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North Harbour Stadium an option
New stadium being investigated
Sep 20, 2006
Rugby officials are being reminded not to forget North Harbour Stadium as an option for the 2011 World Cup.

While all the talk of a new national stadium has surrounded Eden Park and the waterfront, Albany's stadium been a glaring omission in the discussions.

Harbour Stadium CEO Brendon O'Connor says he's not saying they should necessarily play host to the final, but they should at least be assessed as an option by officials.

O'Connor says he's written to World Cup Minister Trevor Mallard and will hopefully speak to him soon to discuss a way of moving forward.

Brendon O'Connor says everything's perfectly set up at Harbour Stadium as they have significant public transport advantages and they're already largely zoned for further stadium development.

Sure it is near the northern motorway but shit, look on a map and you'll see it's hardly even in Auckland. Albany was set up as a pseudo satellite city.

Takes us about 20 minutes to get there from Massey and when the highway goes through properly we would be able to take a few minutes off that but for those to the west, south and east of central Auckland you would have a shit of a time to get there.

Not to mention the fact that it would be 10% full for most matches thereafter.

Floating Stadium please!!!

What we could then do is drive it up the Waitemata and people could hop on at the Te Atatu Peninsula, then drive it round the bend to Takapuna where a few more could get on and so forth.

It would make ejections cooler as well, because we could show them being thrown into the water and swimming for their life on the big screen at halftime.