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The court of Rangiora's Mainpower Stadium is usually reserved for team sports like basketball and netball.
But on Monday night, the focus of a North Canterbury crowd was on one man, a lectern, a banner, and a New Zealand flag - all completely swallowed up by the space.
Attendees wedged themselves into every available spot on a set of benches to hear from Paul Henry, in the latest stop on his 'Paul Henry Unlocked' tour.
Over the course of an hour, the ACT candidate fielded questions on immigration, gene technology, health funding, the United Nations, supermarkets, and polls.
"Look at you all," he told attendees.
"The one thing we all share here in common is we all care enough about New Zealand to take time to talk about its future."
He opined on everything from Labour ("bloody fools"), to National ("National's instinct is to tread too softly"), to debt ("we have become a country that consumes the achievements of previous generations without building enough for the next generation"), to public servants ("they will strangle our economy even more").
Organisers said around 500 people RSVP'd to Monday night's event, and it was the longest queue for photos of the tour yet.
Henry was clearly having fun, but at the end of this is potentially something much more serious: a job in Parliament.
Ranked fourth on ACT's list, he's above six of the current caucus.
It meant his chances of entering Parliament were practically a certainty, barring a torpedo to ACT's support (Monday night's 1 News Verian poll had ACT up 2 points to 11 percent - or 14 seats in the House).
Since the announcement of his candidacy, he has expressed his desire to be a minister, and his reluctance to sit on the backbench.
After the public meeting, RNZ asked Henry whether he was ready to potentially sit in the House at 9:30pm and speak on a bill he had no real interest in.
"Probably not, probably not," he admitted.
"But I've led my life not thinking too much about consequences, because I think if you think about consequences too much, you probably would do a lot less."
Henry said he would "absolutely not" quit if he was not made a minister, even if it meant he was "perhaps going to have to" attend the occasional select committee.
"I think there's still a very important job to do, and very much, I'm committed. When I do something, I'm committed to it, and I'm desperately committed to this. I mean, that would be a very silly way for a 66-year-old man to go about, coming out of semi-retirement and then throwing your toys because it didn't go 100 percent in your direction."
Last week, ACT leader David Seymour told RNZ that "of course" Henry would be an MP.
"I've sat down with Paul a lot in the last few years. When you sit down with him, he's serious, he's softly spoken, he's got deep conviction," he said.
"Paul Henry is a much more serious person than others realise. I realised that first, and that's why we've been able to bring them on board."
Henry will continue doing these meetings throughout the campaign, but with ACT due to hold its campaign launch this weekend, he'll be spending more time on the road with Seymour and other candidates.
He estimated in the six weeks he had been travelling around the country to hold these meetings and visit businesses, he had spoken to a "ballpark" 9000 people.
In 2023, ACT received 10.5 percent of the party vote in Waimakariri, compared to 8.6 percent nationwide.
But the electorate, since 2008 at least, has been National heartland. It received 19,969 party votes last time around.
It's exactly the sort of electorate that Henry was targeting for a few more votes for ACT.
"I think there are a lot of National supporters who sit in the camp where they think more should have been achieved in this last term," he said.
"A nudge in the right direction isn't good enough."
While most questions to him were friendly, or at least friendly towards the right-side of politics, there were the occasionally curly ones.
A question on ACT's support for the gene tech legislation was a case in point. New Zealand First doesn't support the bill, and for some voters that would make the difference when they cast their vote.
Henry, who told the audience member ACT didn't want New Zealand to "miss the boat" on new technologies, told RNZ afterwards that sometimes it was about mitigating the damage if someone was asking a question he sensed was not supportive.
"But always answer honestly, and I think certainly with that subject, people always think what is the worst-case scenario, and it's very important to us that we protect from the worst-case scenario. So I think giving people another perspective to look at."
While he didn't announce any new policy, in an answer to a question from the crowd on funding for St John's Ambulance, he said the service's funding structure was "a wee bit shameful", and something he had "decided personally to look at very closely".
Afterwards, he clarified that was a personal view, not ACT policy.
"It's something that I'm interested in, and it's something that I've genuinely thought in my life. It is extraordinary the service they provide with essentially no support. So it's something that I've always thought was a bit of an anomaly, and yeah, something I'd look at."
