A decade of organising sporting favourites
Laying awake at 4am, listening to the rain on the roof and wondering how many people won’t show up to your event because of the weather is something that Matt Sillars won’t miss.
Sillars stepped down as Sport Southland’s events manager last week after a decade of leading many of Southland’s most popular and high-profile events.
The ICC Surf to City – Southland’s biggest participation event – the 2011 Rugby World Cup games in Invercargill, and the 2012 UCI junior world track cycling championships feature on his resume, but there are also a hundred other events, both little and large, which have benefited from his expertise and forthrightness.
Relationships built, friendships formed and the satisfaction of staging a wide range of quality, safe experiences for Southlanders to enjoy mean that Sillars moves on with a sense of satisfaction about a job well done.
Not that he’s retiring, or even taking a break from the events sector. Sillars will be working with Traffic Management Services and once the events calendar starts to recover post-Covid-19, will provide direct support for event organisers under the banner ‘‘Oreti Events’’.
■ The event industry changed forever in New Zealand in 2001 when a pregnant cyclist was hit and killed while participating in Le Race in Christchurch.
Events across the country were thrown into doubt, including the annual
Surf to City in Invercargill.
Le Race owner Astrid Andersen was found guilty of criminal nuisance and fined – but her conviction was later quashed by the Court of Appeal.
When the coroner’s report came out nearly a year later, Sillars poured through the 30-page document – he still has the file on his computer – and then went to see Gerry Forde to have a chat about getting the ‘Surf’ back up and running.
‘‘Astrid got hung out higher than most because the judge said that as a professional event organiser they expected a higher standard of her than a community set up.’’
For five years, Sillars, Grant Baker and Bruce Halligan ran the Surf to City and the Festival of Running, including the longrunning Southland marathon, from Riverton to Invercargill.
‘‘We used to have a flat trailer with 10 signs and a few cones and that got us from Riverton to here, no crossing marshals or anything, people just used their common sense and did their own thing,’’ Sillars said. Event organisers have a saying about the 10 per cent of the population who are challenged when it comes to common sense. At any event, that number might jump to 20 percent, and 90 percent of an event organiser’s job will be planning for that 20 percent.
With his experience running athletics events, and adventure and multisport events with the Southland Triathlon and Multisport Club, Sillars was wellplaced to take over running events for Sport Southland from Richard Pasco in 2010.
The following year he and Sally Marr led the volunteer effort as Invercargill hosted three Rugby World Cup matches.
‘‘It was a whole ball of fun with Sally and I. We had to recruit, train, uniform and then manage about 150 volunteers.’’
The role included ensuring fans didn’t steal off with merchandise, or the highly sought-after volunteer uniforms, as well as ensuring the marque which was volunteer HQ didn’t blow away from the Rugby Park carpark.
The next year Invercargill hosted the UCI junior world track cycling championships and Sillars again played a key role.