Cheap seats on the way to Te Puke

Ash Peat, Kim Hiwaka and Luke Keenleyside of Te Puke Sports. Photo: Nikki South.

The calamity that befell Christchurch has turned into a windfall, and a small blessing, for the Te Puke Sport and Recreation Club.

More than 300 seats from the 135-year-old Lancaster Park rugby and cricket stadium, which has been deconstructed after 2011's 6.3 earthquake, have landed at Port of Tauranga and will eventually find their way into a new grandstand at Te Puke's Murray Salt Stadium.

'It's a bit ‘cart before the horse',” says Te Puke Sport's Ash Peat. 'We have this rickety old grandstand which is near the end of its life. There's a concept plan for a new one, but the seats from Lancaster Park were up for sale and it was too good an opportunity to miss. We thought we better grab the seats and worry about the grandstand later.”

They dispatched club member, Rex Olsen, to Christchurch. 'He knows about these things, he looked them over and said we better have a bit of this.”

The sums all stacked up – 300 seats at $10 a seat. 'We checked online,” says Ash, 'and inferior stadium seats were going for more than $100. So it was an excellent deal.” And VBase, the owners of the Christchurch stadium, threw in another 30 seats for free. 'And we had all these partners like Zespri shipping come on-board to get them here.

'The club has provided everything - fields, lights, the maintenance - and this is just another exciting progression.”

The new grandstand at Murray Salt Stadium is a concept plan at the moment. 'But we hope to have it built and the Lancaster Park seats in place for the beginning of the 2019 rugby season.”

And even before the Lancaster seats even landed in Tauranga, 220 seats had been on sold for $100 each to the community of Te Puke as a fundraising exercise.

'You get your name on the seat, but you don't get to put your bum on it.” The seats were due to land at Port of Tauranga on Friday (November 17).

You may also like....