The appeal of Blake Park and Bay Oval was evident yesterday as cricket and sevens rugby attracted New Zealand sporting royalty to within 200m of each other.
New Zealand selector Bruce Edgar looked on as Northern Districts made a fair start with the bat in the first innings of a practice match against the Wellington Firebirds, while Sir Gordon Tietjens turned film star across the road on a field sporting his name.
The masterful sevens coach was filming a tutorial of sorts for sevens coaches that will be made available through the NZRU's website.
"Obviously the demand from coaches for more sevens information is getting more and more so we've decided to get the pearls of wisdom from Sir Gordon Tietjens and put it together as a sevens section," said NZRU game development manager Richard Skelly.
"We're not trying to get the teams across the country playing the same brand, we're just providing technical resources for individual coaches to take out of it what they will to develop their flavour of rugby. The same applies in sevens as fifteens."