No rugby on University Oval this season

University will have to shift over a few paddocks to play its rugby this season.

The club’s home venue will be out for the entire club rugby season.

Dunedin City Council group manager of parks and recreation services Robert West confirmed the council will undertake work to upgrade the outfield and the drainage at the University of Otago Oval following the cricket season.

"This is to improve drainage on the ground and ensure that we have a first-class playing surface ready in time for the Women’s World Cup Cricket 2021 fixtures to be held in Dunedin next summer," West said.

"Work will begin in late March and continue on through the autumn [and] early winter.

"This will mean that the University Rugby Football Club [URFC] will not be able to play on the ground for the 2020 season."

The team will not be too put out. It will host its home games at Logan Park No6 which is probably only 100m away.

The club has hosted early-season games there in recent years anyway while the cricket wicket recovers. It will also get to host a home game at Forsyth Barr Stadium in June.

URFC chairman Paul Hessian said the club was happy to step aside for the season.

"We’ve taken a stance of being very co-operative with this," Hessian said.

"It is a big decision for us but we are looking at the wider picture. Obviously we want to get international cricket into the city and that is a sacrifice the club has decided it can make to help out.

"The council really went out of their way to accommodate us and we are happy for this year. But I would hasten to add that this is not in anyway setting a precedent for the future.

"We will be back with club rugby on the University Oval. There is no doubt about that.

"Any thoughts it will become an exclusive cricket ground is not the case from our point of view."

The University Oval is a multi-use facility but there have been issues in recent seasons. Work done at the end of the cricket season on the wicket block has put the ground out of commission for the early rounds of the club rugby season.

That area of the ground became very boggy a few seasons ago as well which meant further games had to be shifted to another ground. That created a little bit of tension between the codes. Cricket is keen to protect the venue while rugby wants full use of the facility.

"The bit we have questioned, and the maintenance guys are looking into, is whether the wicket block needs the same sort of extensive renovation in autumn because it almost seems to be repeated again in the spring."

West said the council was "trying to make it as best as we can for the two codes that play on there. But sometimes we have that overlap".

West could not comment on the costs of the upgrade because the council was "right in the middle of the tender process" and the budget was commercially sensitive.

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