OPINION: A Grade To Wonder About

SPORTRITE
OPINION with Tim Eves email: sports@northernadvocate.co.nz
ADMIT it, bracing yourself for election year was always going to be an exercise in suspending belief.
In between kissing babies, having a hongi with an activist or two and schmoozing with billionaires, politicians have to somehow convince us they are worth the tax dollars they spend on airbrushed photographs and designer suits.
But, surely, there is only so much we can take.
You can hardly blame our much-maligned rugby administrators, though. Bernard Lapasset, the chairman of the International Rugby Board (IRB) and IRB chief executive Mike Miller, probably didn't even realise we had elections down this end of the planet.
So when they rocked into town recently, jumped into a limousine, were shown artistic impressions of Eden Park, 3D models of Lancaster Park, dined at a swanky hotel and were told how excited we all are that they even managed to find their way here, who could blame them? Of course they were going to give the New Zealand Rugby World Cup organising crew: ``A+ for their preparations to next Rugby World Cup tournament.'
It might have been a bit foolish to try to foist that particular piece of publicity on the peasants in the provinces, though.
From where we sit, Eden Park is still a large bomb shelter with corporate boxes and a hot dog stand, Lancaster Park is AMI Stadium and is busy being revamped to look flasher but eventually seat less people and Wellington looks great but can't fit enough punters through the turnstiles. Not when it comes to a world cup tournament anyway.
As far as international rugby stadiums go, that's about it.
The rest of the country is about to be thrown into an expensive game of one-upmanship, a competition to see who can spend the most outrageous amount of dosh on a new grandstand.
All the provincial centres will then line up in their Sunday best to ``bid' for hosting rights to a Rugby World Cup fixture, trying to look simultaneously corporate and destitute. The latter shouldn't be too hard to pull off.
But if they win, then places like, say, Whangarei, might get the chance to host Zimbabwe in a group game against, for example, Kenya. Provided they pay the organisers a six figure sum upfront and have put ratepayers into debt by about six times that amount.
So far Dunedin is leading the race, with plans for a glass covered edifice, perhaps in the shape of a Speights beer bottle, costing around $400 million. Queenstown could be the next best _ they want to build a stadium where there aint one. Not yet, anyway. Theirs will probably look like the Remarkables.
We all know the ongoing Eden Park saga, Taupo are keen, Wanganui want in, Nelson know they want it and Palmerston North reckon they can pull it off as well.
But, even when a mathematical numbskull like myself is told that the Rugby World Cup needs to entertain more than two million spectators to turn a profit, then things surely can't be as ``A+' as we are being told.
Two million? That's half the total population here, a third of which couldn't care less. Another third won't be able to afford a ticket and the other third are so well connected that they haven't paid for a rugby ticket in 20 years and wouldn't go to a rugby game if they had to.
The last rugby world cup had an average attendance of 47,000 to all 48 games. Even if Eden Park is finished on time, we don't have one stadium that can seat that many spectators at capacity.
Then there's housing the teams. IRB regulations deem it necessary for every team at the Rugby World Cup sleep in five-star accommodation.
That probably blows Northland's marae sleep-in masterplan complete with brisket boil-ups and a pumpkin soup as the entr?e.
And if, by some masterstroke of town planning, Whangarei did build a five-star hotel in the 1300 days between now and the start of the cup in 2011, all the beds would be taken by the English rugby team, their 48 support staff and 120 media representatives. That would probably keep the Kenyan supporters bunked down in Auckland at the backpackers lounge with the Zimbabweans, unable to afford a bus ticket north.
And preparations here are A+?
Now there's a suspended bridge of belief if we've ever seen one.