Get cracking on planning for Rugby World Cup, says expert

Rod McGeoch

New Zealand's planning for the 2011 Rugby World Cup should be well under way by now, Australian sports business consultant Rod McGeoch said yesterday.

Mr McGeoch chaired the Sydney 2000 Olympic bid committee and helped Athens to secure the 2004 Olympics, both massive money-spinners for those cities.

The Rugby World Cup offered New Zealand the prospect of promoting wider tourism and business opportunities, he said.

A member of the New Zealand Rugby Union World Cup 2011 advisory committee, he told a news briefing the "underlying multiplier effects of events like the World Cup are undeniable".

"The people who set an agenda need to come together and do it," he said. "Somebody has to develop a plan. I would be hoping we will see emerge some legacy planning."

He said Australia and Sydney failed in some of the wider goals to leverage off the Olympics.

"I think there is a grander prize to be had," he said.

World Cup planners had to include people outside rugby to get them involved.

Inevitably, governments were key partners in big event planning, particularly in ensuring the infrastructure was in place.

For the Sydney Olympics he had wanted to develop broad concepts of community and fraternity for both Sydney and Australia, but the organisers either did not take those goals on board, or did not see them as within their area of responsibility.

He had wanted communities near every train station to develop a garden to help transform often grubby places and build civic pride.

He suggested World Cup organisers involve people from every part of New Zealand in the opening ceremony, rather than rely only on Aucklanders.

There were opportunities for towns to bid to host particular teams during the event and to leverage off the publicity that created.

He urged this process be developed so a complete inventory of what the country had available was built.

Already, cities such as Dunedin were planning to revamp stadiums.

Mr McGeoch, whose wife calls him "the most competitive bugger on Earth", said such an event was an opportunity to modify or develop how New Zealand branded itself to the world.

During the Olympics, Sydney set out to sell itself as an Asian financial centre while the Government tried to get across the message of Australia as a place to do business.

Mr McGeoch said it was important when assessing the benefits of the big events that the cost of ensuring infrastructure was in place was not put alongside the actual return made by the event - what he called the myth of the Montreal Games.

The A$3 billion ($3.6 billion) extra infrastructure cost for Sydney was taken from New South Wales' A$56 billion capital expenditure budget spread over seven years, so while fewer hospitals and schools were built over that period, there was no borrowing or extra tax for the Games.

Mr McGeoch told the large audience about some of the tricks used to win the events he has helped secure.

Research played a large role. He told how some had assumed Mongolia would vote for China for the Olympics, but a few minutes' study told him Mongols often resented China's influence.

The gifting of some Australian-reared ponies of a Mongol breed extinct in their homeland, also helped.

"Don't assume anything. Validate everything," he said.

In an encouraging message for New Zealand, Mr McGeoch said the biggest didn't always win.

"It isn't about who has the most money, it's how you spend it."

- NZPA