Let’s learn from past mistakes

Brushing aside all the hoopla and optimistic enthusiasm surrounding the relocation of the Sevens Rugby competition from Wellington to Hamilton, there are two very positive elements to the project. The first is that there will be no ratepayer investment and second is that it will be for a two-year trial.

Lessons about investing ratepayers’ funds in these events were learned with the V8 project and Hamiltonians are rightly a bit gun-shy about funding another attempt.

The Sevens Rugby competition was a great success in Wellington for 12 years but audience support had declined for the last four and the reasons for that decline have not been properly addressed.

These fast-moving games were a delight to watch and the audience soon included families as well as the usual rugby fans who were not numerous enough on their own to make the enterprise commercially viable. That combined audience got involved with supporters wearing team colours and engaging in all manner of high jinks and antics which added to the spectacle. Sadly and inevitably, a few booze-fuelled idiots spoiled the fun and families stayed away from the games in droves to avoid drunks and fights.

The Wellington Sevens audience finally declined to only 18,000 attending the two-day tournament last year, leaving rows of empty seats in the 34,500-capacity Westpac Stadium. It died at that point.

If however, as is planned, the Sevens competition is used as the foundation of a bigger festival with a much wider appeal, it may well be a success but it will require the community at large to set some rules for audience and visitor behaviour.

If the bars, clubs and pubs are allowed to remain open until all hours, the life of what could be a positive project will be very short.

While the Hamilton business community has given enthusiastic backing for the relocation of the competition, and so they should, they could be expected to do that for any other project which will bring several thousand people into town for a few days. They would be equally supportive of a chess tournament or tiddly winks championship provided the people came and spent money in the city. The behaviour of the audience and the gate takings for the main event are not their concern.

Rugby in past taught us how to lose with dignity, win with generosity and, at least in theory, take a hard knock without retaliation. Team-mates were not impressed by those who resorted to fists on the field or those who could not hold their beer off it. Anyone who wore the coveted All Blacks jersey, as an amateur of the past or a modern professional, was a hero and many rightfully still are. Most are also outstanding ambassadors for New Zealand and the game and go on to successful professional careers at the end of their rugby years.

In the past decade or two, however, rugby has changed from being a sport to a commercial commodity in the form of a gladiatorial encounter which thousands of people are prepared to pay large sums to watch. Direct broadcasting rights are sold to the highest bidder and those who once listened to radio as the game was being played can now only watch delayed broadcasts on free-to-air television if they don’t want to pay the fee to watch the game in real time. Those developments can be seen as part of the modern game but they have also reduced the audience to some degree.

Along with the changes to the game have come changes to audience behaviour.

The Sevens was not the first such event to be ruined by a minority who assume it is acceptable to get hopelessly drunk and create mayhem for everyone else, and it won’t be the last. The wonderful Blossom Festivals of the 1960s and 1970s were often ruined by such behaviour. Major popular music concerts, New Year’s Eve celebrations and most other entertainment events which attract a large audience have often been wrecked by a minority who retain the outdated New Zealand cultural philosophy that getting plastered at every opportunity is the only way to have fun. They destroy the efforts and investment of large numbers of people who work very hard to provide such entertainment and we have yet to learn how to stop them.

What makes anyone think that Hamilton and Auckland drunks will be any better behaved than Wellington drunks and that Hamilton families will be any more tolerant than Wellington families? They won’t be.

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR