Rugby World Cup 2023: The lesson that can be learned by Auckland and New Zealand from hosts France - Gregor Paul

OPINION

Gregor Paul in Lyon

The French handed the All Blacks quite the rugby lesson in the opening game of the World Cup.

But in the weeks since, it is what France has done off the field that is highlighting how far New Zealand has fallen behind and how, if it ever wants to even be a remote possibility to once again host a World Cup, it can’t keep tipping money into the bottomless pit that is Eden Park.

And, if the country wants people to turn up in New Zealand and not feel like they have arrived in the land that time forgot, then its infrastructure spend over the next decade needs to be in the hundreds of billions of dollars.

This World Cup was, on the recommendation of the sport’s governing body, supposed to be in South Africa, but it is easy to see why the member nations were seduced by the idea of moving it to France.

Coming to France shifted the financial dial a long way, and this is a tournament that is understood to have delivered World Rugby the most spectacular windfall.

But voting to give the 2023 tournament to France wasn’t just about the money.

It’s an incredible place to showcase the sport, primarily because the French have invested so heavily in state-of-the-art stadiums, and in return, their people have bought an incredible number of match tickets and embraced their role as colourful and vibrant hosts.

This World Cup is almost proving that if you build it, they will come - and given that Auckland’s civic leaders have such a deep love of a research junket, it would be a travesty if a handful of them didn’t get themselves over to France before they go and do something plain stupid like hand over yet more cash to Eden Park.

Stade de France during the opening ceremony of the Rugby World Cup France 2023. Photo / Getty Images

The French have spent big on infrastructure, but they haven’t stuck up vanity projects everywhere that are testament to ego, disjointed thinking and short-termism.

In Paris, there is the 80,000 capacity Stade de France - the showpiece venue in a city of 10 million people, while in the smaller Toulouse, there is a boutique 30,000-capacity stadium.

They build for what they need, not what they want, and they don’t just plonk a stadium somewhere and then wonder after the fact how people will get there.

New Zealand’s politicians are still twisting themselves in knots about whether Auckland, a city with a population of one million people, needs or could even build a light rail network.

The French haven’t bothered even asking the question, they have just built stuff, and Toulouse, Bordeaux, Lyon, Marseille and Montpellier - cities which barely have half, or in some cases not even a quarter of Auckland’s population - run several tramlines that connect to rail networks, while in all of these cities there is also a ubiquitous peloton of commuters cycling to work on dedicated, ultra-safe bike lanes.

People seem happy to be French, and maybe this is the point being missed in New Zealand: having a bold vision for a city and investing in it, rather than arguing about how to invest in it, fosters a deep civic pride.

The French are delivering a World Cup that New Zealand never could - and it’s not just about relative population size and associated economic strength.

New Zealand needs a plan, a vision for how sport and stadiums fit into daily lives and a willingness to invest, and it needs to start with Auckland.

Someone needs to take control and decide, definitively, if the city is going to give up having any aspirations to build a modern, world-class sporting venue that encapsulates the best qualities of the country and effectively becomes the national stadium, or whether they just want to keep asking ratepayers for $20 million to $30m every few years or so to tip into a range of ill-conceived and crumbling stadiums, in the hope that will just about keep them fit for purpose.

If it’s the latter that’s deemed to be the right path for Auckland, as it has been to date, then at least declare it so ratepayers can stop being killed by hope.

And if a civic leader with guile, ambition and drive should mysteriously turn up in the next wee while, then hopefully they will be guided by the French and have a vision where a stadium, if it’s built for the city’s needs and not to define someone’s legacy, can add to the rich fabric of urban living.

Forget about dripping yet more cash into Eden Park when it comes asking, as it inevitably will, and think big, spend big and give Auckland the waterfront venue most people seem to want.

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