Chris Rattue: Last rites, and the passage of time

The rumour is that the meeting between the wrecker's ball and the old Carlaw Park grandstand is imminent, and so it's another chance to quickly reminisce about the old ground. For Auckland sports nuts, memory lane has no more fabled route than one involving soccer's long-gone Newmarket Park, and league's former home, which is now Car Park.

Both were inner city foxholes that could send a sporting shiver up the spine, or even terror in the heart if you used the toilets.

For media types, there was no more fabled place than the soon-to-be-wrecked Carlaw Park press box, which sat right over the top of the ground and used to sway in a decent wind. Talk about the best seat in the house, although you took your life in your hands trying to get there - over the grandstand roof - in rough weather.

It was here one day that the Great Britain manager Maurice Lindsay, a tike of dubious charm, got a couple of his players to stand over the timekeeper during a test match. And it was from a nearby window that the Mad Butcher once rained sausages down on the Wizard from Christchurch.

One day, the fire people arrived and announced we had been sitting in a death trap. But that wasn't the sort of heat you feared the most. The media, and often anybody else who happened to be about, used to vote for a player of the day and after the announcement was made, the angry moans from the crowd below could run right through you. Fond memories, but time has already moved on.