Brian Rudman: Movable super-stadium answer to Eden Park

It's more than a month since the Eden Park Trust Board launched plans for a $320 million rebuilding of Auckland's premier sports stadium and still there's not a word from anyone on how it's to be paid for.

All we've got are people scrambling to display their own empty wallets. Like Rugby World Cup Minister Trevor Mallard, who was at pains last Friday to emphasise that the Government was only committed to spending $20 million on Eden Park improvements. Finding the other $300 million, he said, was always the responsibility of the trust board.

The only glimmer of hope from Mr Mallard was that any possible further Government help would "be taken under careful consideration based on the economic benefits" gained from the event and the potential benefits of hosting other major events.

As for the project's biggest cheerleader, Auckland Mayor Dick Hubbard, he has no idea where the bulk of the money is coming from either.

I still believe the smart Auckland thing to do is sit tight and bluff it out. Ambitious Mr Mallard is not going to be humiliated by failing to produce the venue he promised world rugby chiefs. For Auckland's local politicians, keeping the purse closed is more than just a smart move. It's a matter of political survival. It's a long time since Auckland ratepayers have seemed so united - and vocally so - against paying for a project.

Certainly, advocates like trust board development fund chairman Rob Fisher are going to have to do better than propose city ratepayers pay the "lion's share" because they're the ones who will benefit "year in, year out". In the words of the Tui billboards: "Yeah Right."

Mr Mallard and Mr Hubbard seem fixated on impressing the rest of the world with Auckland's handling of the World Cup challenge. My guess is, if the rest of the world is thinking of us at all, they'll be hoping we have a huge cost blowout on facilities so as to make their past stadium follies appear a little less embarrassing.

Take Sydney, which has a whole suburb of excess-to-requirements, ex-Olympic Games facilities that echo these days mostly to the odd squawking galah. Then there's Athens, groaning in debt from its Olympic overspending. No doubt it's a similar story from one international sports venue to the next.

It makes you wish for a stadium that could be packed up like a circus tent and moved on to the next venue. Well why not?

For the past decade, American engineer Norman Nixon has been pushing his plans for a huge floating city that slowly cruises the world like some vast man-made iceberg.

In July last year, he announced that his "Freedom City" was to be built in Turkey. It is to be 1417m long, 246m wide and 114.8m high, complete with an airport on the roof.

Don't you love dreams which come with such exact measurements? To accommodate 108,000 people - both permanent residents and visitors - it will cruise the world at seven nautical miles an hour powered by 100 diesel engines generating 3700 horsepower each.

Rugby fans will have noted that it's 10 times the length of a rugby field - maximum in-goal area included - and nearly four times wider. But if such dimensions are a little ambitious - why not start off with a second-hand supertanker?

The biggest ever built, now called Knock Nevis, is, at 25 years old, semiretired and at anchor in the Gulf. It's 458m long and 69m wide. A little narrow, perhaps, but you could always cantilever stands off either side. If we can land people on the moon, surely such a project would be a doddle.

All it needs is an entrepreneur to see the possibilities. Imagine, instead of Olympic-sized super-stadiums, gathering dust and beggaring cities all round the world, the World Cup or Olympic Games circus could turn up, 21st century tent in tow.

Mr Nixon (freedomship) was confident his huge ark would take just 3 years to build, so Mr Mallard has plenty of time to launch the world's first portable stadium. The world attention would be more than he could imagine. Then we could sell it - or lease it - to the International Rugby Board, or Rupert Murdoch, or whoever wants a scarcely used 60,000-seat stadium.