Why Addington's famous sports sward is more than a 'draughty old dump'

Saturday, 21 June 2025

The former Wallaby's first Super Rugby final will be his last game for the red and blacks

Tony Smith is a senior sports writer at The Press

OPINION: The Crusaders retain respect for the stadium dubbed “the draughty old dump”, and it’s time the rest of Christchurch gave it its proper dues.

Doubling down on Apollo Projects Stadium seems to have become Canterbury’s second favourite sport.

We all cannot wait to watch under a roof next year at the new One New Zealand Stadium, which will instantly be one of the best southern hemisphere sporting venues.

Who doesn’t look forward to remaining bone dry and seeing Te Kaha eventually host Christchurch-based Super Rugby, NRL and A-League teams?

But, Matariki weekend is an appropriate time to pay homage to Christchurch’s longest still-in-use slice of sporting whenua.

The Addington sward — where the Crusaders and Chiefs will play Saturday’s Super Rugby Pacific Final — first hosted top-level competition 100 years before the “temporary” stadium was knocked up in 90 days after the Canterbury earthquakes wrecked Lancaster Park.

Rugby league fans show their support for the Kiwis in 2025 at Addington’s famous stadium which first hosted top-level sport in 1912.

Comfort-obsessed punters now cannot look past the scaffolding stands, the extremities-numbing south-wester and the queues for the portacabin loos.

But some still see beyond the current creaky edifice to the pitch itself, a true field of dreams we knew for decades as the Addington Showgrounds or Rugby League Park.

The “old dump’’ then, and now, was Christchurch’s most intimate sports ground.

In its league heyday two pitches stood end-to-end. Swivel-necked fans stood at the fence and followed both games. You were so close you could feel, let alone hear, the onomatopoeic thud of every big hit. It was like being in a Sensurround cinema long before Earthquake and Rollercoaster reached the big screen.

The Canterbury rugby league team after winning the 1993 grand final against Auckland at Addington Showgrounds.

Now, the “temporary’’ flophouse is set to host its fourth Super Rugby final. It’s also staged five All Blacks tests. FIFA even allowed Under-20 World Cup games there in 2015, although they gave it a big swerve for the Women’s World Cup in 2023. Rugby league followers return to their spiritual home in droves for Warriors NRL games and Kiwis tests.

My own Showgrounds memories go back almost 60 years. Glancing out now from the press bench, I can still imagine Uncle Jim Bond playing for Papanui, Canterbury and the Kiwis in the 1960s and recall Frank Endacott’s Canterbury team trouncing Auckland in the 1993 national championship final.

Older Addington attendees still dine out on the 1953 Kiwis’ epic upset of Australia.

People loved the old Lancaster Park. Everyone knew someone who had camped out all night, in conditions much colder than today’s, to get a ticket to a test. It wasn’t always comfortable, but it was home. Punters were packed, cheek to jowl, on the infamous embankment from where it proved impossible to reach the dunnies. Hence the run on bicycle tyre tubes from central city cycle shops. Ask granddad to explain.

But Lancaster Park, first and foremost a cricket oval built near a noisome gasworks, was a dreadful place to watch rugby. Spectators were so far from the action they might have been stationed at Scott Base.

David Havili in action against the Highlanders in 2025 at Apollo Projects Stadium, where he has played since 2014.

As soon as the Crusaders hit Addington in 2012 they noticed the atmosphere instantly, remarking how it was hard to hear lineout calls over the din.

Rugby union fans in New Zealand often sit in reverential silence as if they were scared to make a sound in church. Yet, the ambience at Addington today is the equal of any club rugby ground in this part of the world.

Ask David Havili. The Crusaders captain stood on Friday on the Addington turf where he has played since 2014 and spoke of the venue’s charms.

“It’s such a close stadium. If you look around the seats are within 10 metres of the field. It really feels like they’re on top of you and they really get behind us.”

That does not mean of course that Havili and his team won’t relish the move to Te Kaha as much as the Crusaders’ supporters and bean counters.

Even if it means the Crusaders’ crucial “home advantage’’ — the chilling Christchurch cold and rain — will disappear on Te Kaha’s level playing field. Much as it did for the Highlanders in the switch from the Carisbrook fridge to Forsyth Barr.

But as fans huddle on their narrow seats on Saturday and watch the Crusaders horses canter, they should not forget two facts.

If it wasn’t for the Canterbury Rugby League generously surrendering its lease at Addington, there may have been no “temporary’’ stadium. The Crusaders might have had to move to Nelson.

And this hallowed ground has served Christchurch admirably since Canterbury played Wellington at rugby league on the same spot in 1912.

A sporting citadel is more about memories than the inconvenience of being cold, wet and cramped for two hours.