Adnaan Mohamed - Tour Diary

Auckland – With New Zealand hosting next year’s World Cup rugby tournament, it was interesting to visit Eden Park rugby stadium on Wednesday, which will be the venue for next year’s World Cup final.

Eden Park has been a happy hunting ground over the years for the All Blacks especially against the Boks.

The last time the Boks managed to beat the Kiwis here was in 1937.

That is why Saturday’s encounter will be of particular significance for both teams.
New Zealand is currently the IRB's top-ranked team - on 91.68 points. South Africa is currently second on 89.46 points. 

Statistically the All Blacks and the Springboks are currently the two best teams on the planet and the side that comes out on top at Eden Park on Saturday will not only become the number one side in the world, but will also strike the first psychological blow ahead of next year’s tournament.

But what struck me yesterday when visiting the ground is the fact that it resembled a construction site rather than a stadium where a major rugby Test match is to be played in less than three days.

If  I compare all the 2010 Soccer World Cup stadia to what I saw at Eden park, it should take a miracle to upgrade Eden Park to look anywhere near as impressive as any one of our stadia.

Besides the impressive Cape Town stadium, the Moses Mabhida stadium in Durban and Soccer City in Johannesburg just to mention a few, I think even Athlone stadium which was only used as a training venue for the Soccer World Cup would put Eden Park to shame.

Because the stadium is under construction only 25 000 out of a possible 68 000 people will be able to watch the game at the venue on Saturday. 

I think it would have made far more sense for the NZRU to have moved the game to the North Harbour stadium which is not too far away.

I received an email to collect my accreditation at the stadium offices on Wednesday morning from 09:00 onwards, but when I arrived there I was told that it had not arrived from Wellington yet. 

According to their media managers, they are having a dry run with the accreditation process for next year. But if this is how they are going to do things, they better get their house in order very quickly.

And while on the subject of sports stadia. Springbok-flanker Francois Louw was aksed by a New Zealand journalist quite innocently if he thought that rugby should be played at the impressive new Cape Town Stadium in the future.

Louw was very diplomatic in his response by saying that the new stadium was awesome and had a great atmosphere, with the picturesque mountain and the sea as a backdrop, however he felt that Newlands should remain the home of rugby because of its rich heritage and tradition.

But what the journo asking the question didn’t know and what Louw failed to mention was that one of the stands at Newlands is named after his grandfather, a former WP player and president of the union, Jan “Bull” Pickard.

Louw obviously had no choice in the matter. What else could he have said?