League: Mayor hails NRL match success

Dragons player Pita Mata'utia is tackled by the Melbourne Storm in Napier last night. Photo / Getty Images

The Mayor of the art deco capital was last night claiming a new honour for his city after Napier pulled off a sporting coup by staging an NRL rugby league match between glamour side Melbourne Storm and historic Sydney club St George Illawarra.

Bill Dalton, son of an All Black and more used to watching rugby union games at McLean Park, home of the Ranfurly Shield, said: "We were the events capital of Hawke's Bay.

"Now we're the events capital of New Zealand."

A bold statement, it was in a moment of euphoria near the end of a game watched by 14,532 and won 22-4 by the Storm whose club had effectively sold home ground advantage to Napier to avoid a clash with Real Madrid, Roma and other top global football stars playing in Melbourne over the last week.

"I never ever thought I would see an NRL game in Hawke's Bay," said rugby league enthusiast Ngavii Pekepo, who travelled from Waipawa to Napier for the game, wearing the Hawke's Bay Unicorns blazer he first wore as a representative player in 1976.

Dalton, watching the game in the company of top Storm management, said he believed the game would create many nore opportunities for the provincial city.

The match had particular historic significance - with one of the most historic clubs in Australasia playing one of the first grounds of the current grounds to have ever been used used for the code.

St George was a Sydney foundation club when the code under its original handle of Northern Union was introduced to the Southern Hemisphere in 1908, and McLean Park was initially a rugby league ground, secured for the code when the park was gifted to Napier as Sir Donald McLean Park Memorial Park under an act of Parliament in 1911.

But rugby union gradually took over, and there was little rugby league on McLean Park between the 1920 match between Great Britain and the North Island and a Hawke's Bay club final in 1989.

Over the next four years, Winfield Cup sides Manly and Canterbury each had pre-season matches in Hawke's Bay, at Hastings Nelson Park, which became the home of the Hawke's Bay Unicorns in the mid-1990s Lion Red Cup national competition.

But McLean Park was used for league only twice more until last night's game, when it became the eighth New Zealand ground to be used for a match in the NRL.

- Hawke's Bay Today