Herald on Sunday editorial: Mt Smart - Warriors' heartland

The Warriors feed off the closeness of their fans at Mt Smart Stadium. Photo / Kenny Rodger

Opinion

Understandably, Australian teams do not like playing the Warriors at Mt Smart. The stadium's intimacy means the fans are close, providing a passion off which the home team feeds. It is unsurprising, therefore, that in a chequered history, the Warriors have won about two-thirds of their games there. Any move away from the atmosphere at Mt Smart would have to be for a very good reason. The cavernous Eden Park doesn't seem to meet that criteria and there are substantial question-marks over the financial benefit.

It is easy to see why the Warriors are being prodded towards Eden Park. Auckland's premier stadium does not attract enough major events that come close to filling the 50,000 seats that are a legacy of its $250 million upgrade for the Rugby World Cup. There is a logic in the council agency Regional Facilities Auckland wanting rugby league to be played there as part of a rationalisation of the city's stadiums. It would have been extremely heartened by crowds approaching 40,000 when the Warriors first played at Eden Park in 2011. If subsequent attendances have not been so impressive, they have still exceeded the 14,000 average that Mt Smart had last year.

But when Eden Park is not close to being full, it generates nothing like the fervour of Mt Smart. The fans are simply too far from the action. Many of the staunchest are also a long way from their homes in South Auckland. They have never felt an affinity for the rugby stronghold of Eden Park, and this, together with the difficulty of getting there, may be playing a major part in dwindling attendances. The most loyal fans will feel even more alienated if a shift leads, as seems likely, to an increase in ticket prices.

That rise would be a consequence of the numbers necessary to break even at Eden Park. At their present venue, the Warriors need just 10,000-11,000 spectators. They earn a substantial sum from corporate boxes, signage deals and the other arrangements as the anchor tenant at Mt Smart. At Eden Park, the break-even is understood to be 18,000-19,000 and there will be no such bonuses.

That figure may be easily passed when the team is playing well. But when the Warriors are in the doldrums and a game against a similarly average team is held on a wet July day, a smaller stadium for the team's diehard core of blue-collar fans makes far more sense.

Another likely outcome of a move to Eden Park would be an attempt to attract more white-collar supporters. Marketing rugby league to those who support the Blues would be a logical tactic to help provide the much bigger crowd needed to break even. The required attendance would not be achieved even if all those who go to Mt Smart now made the switch to Eden Park. As much is far from likely, and for some the prospect of sitting among hooray henrys of the rugby set will hardly be an enticement.

It is not coincidental that Eden Park is seen as a hoodoo ground for the Warriors. A home venue lacking passion because of its dimensions or the size of the crowd might just as well be a stadium across the Tasman. Mt Smart is far from perfect, and at some stage will need millions of dollars spent on an upgrade. But it is clearly the favourite venue for the most fervent Warriors' followers. They have the sort of sentimental attachment that the supporters of a club reserve for all but the most run-down of stadiums. Risking a backlash from them seems a foolhardy notion when a shift to Eden Park seems to make so little financial sense.