Christchurch Cup conundrum

Any true friend of Christchurch - and at this particular juncture that is pretty much the entire country - hopes against hope the Rugby World Cup games scheduled for the city can and will go ahead there.

An announcement to this effect would be a welcome vote of confidence and a critical morale-booster for this proud sporting province.

By constrast, a decision to remove the contests would be a further symbolic and psychological blow for the city.

While there has been no official announcement either way, the odds against the full programme of matches remaining in the quake-hit city appear to diminish as time goes on - and as hints and opinions from purportedly well-placed sources emerge.

The latest of these, following UK media speculation last week, came from an anonymous but apparently senior official at the International Rugby Board (IRB), on Friday who said, among other things, that it would take a "massive effort" to rebuild Christchurch in time.

He also raised questions about the infrastructure and hotels and the possibility of their being ready and adequate to the accommodation requirements of the tournament.

This, of course is to state the obvious, and the import of the source's "opinion" is not so much in any revelation as to the situation in Christchurch, rather the possibility that it is indicative of IRB's current thinking.

The true extent of the damage to the AMI stadium was to be revealed in engineering reports due to be handed to the Government over the weekend and discussed by the Cabinet this week.

Prime Minister John Key has already acknowledged the Hadlee and Deans stands suffered in the quake and the playing field itself was subjected to extensive liquefaction.

It is thought the damage might take several months to repair.

That time span will depend on the exact extent of the damage, structural and cosmetic, but an all-out effort to ready the stadium for Cup games could be expected and envisaged - were it the only, or indeed the main, factor in the ultimate decision.

Unfortunately for all concerned it is not.

Even before the earthquake struck, as World Cup minister Murray McCully admitted last week on radio, Christchurch faced accommodation capacity issues, especially with respect to the two quarterfinals it is due to host.

With structural damage to several of Christchurch's major hotels, those capacity issues are amplified many times over.

Even if the stadium and the ground can be made ready in time, where could 30,000-plus visitors possibly stay? There is also the reality that visitors, particularly from overseas, may be reluctant to spend time in Christchurch, raising question marks around the chances of selling the majority of the 50,000 or so tickets that were, in December, still available for the AMI stadium games.

Even if the ground can be made "safe" and accommodation found, there is the matter of public liability insurance required by the tournament organisers: should the engineering reports contain severely adverse findings, this may become impossible.

And then there is the "risk", however improbable, of a further earthquake during the Cup itself which the International Rugby Board is increasingly unlikely to entertain - a further point made by the IRB source.

IRB "hints" or not, it does not look promising.

The situation places Rugby New Zealand and Martin Snedden in a tight spot.

They will want to be making contingency plans, but will be only too aware of the ramifications.

According to the IRB source a decision will be made at the board's next meeting on March 25. Should the engineering reports show limited and fixable damage to the stadium, compromises might be possible, with two or three of the more minor games at AMI stadium, including those not expected to draw huge numbers - and thus overwhelm accommodation and infrastructure capacities - with transfer of the quarterfinals to, for instance, Dunedin and Wellington.

This may be wishful thinking for already it is being said that Auckland provides the only requisite facilities and capacity for additional quarter finals.

Equally unlikely perhaps, other lesser matches could be allotted to Nelson, Timaru and even, possibly the West Coast, bringing a grass-roots dimension to the game that has been conspicuously absent from recent tournaments.

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