The NRL is poised to force the Warriors to play a preliminary final at Eden Park if they win through, with Mt Smart Stadium likely to fall victim to the club’s groundswell of support.<\/p>\n
The Warriors were given a week-one reprieve by the NRL, cleared to face the Dolphins at Mt Smart Stadium on Saturday evening.<\/p>\n
The decision came after head office gave serious consideration to play the match at Eden Park, in the same way Cronulla will host North Queensland at Allianz Stadium.<\/p>\n
But ARL Commission chairman Peter V’landys has confirmed that 50,000-seat Eden Park would likely be used in week three, given it holds double the crowd of Mt Smart.<\/p>\n
“We had a long discussion about moving the game in Auckland to Eden Park. But we decided to go with their existing home ground,” V’landys, who is acting as NRL executive chairman, said.<\/p>\n
“I’d say you’d be 90% sure that we’ll be going to Eden Park (for week three). And we’ve discussed it with the club.<\/p>\n
“They’d like to stay at Mount Smart, but they realise that if all goes to plan, they’re going to have a massive audience, and they’ll be accommodated at Eden Park.”<\/p>\n
V’landys’ comments come with the Warriors having sold out 41 of 46 home games since since returning from their exile from New Zealand during Covid-19.<\/p>\n
The Warriors were allowed to play a week-two final at their normal home of Mt Smart Stadium in 2023, and have never hosted a preliminary final.<\/p>\n
They have not played a game at Eden Park since 2014, with games now taken elsewhere in New Zealand when away from Mt Smart.<\/p>\n
Andrew Webster’s men have won seven of nine games at Mt Smart Stadium this year, having also played home games at Magic Round, Christchurch and Wellington.<\/p>\n
“Mt Smart is home, especially for our members,” injured Warriors veteran Roger Tuivasa-Sheck said.<\/p>\n
“They have had seats there since day dot. To give them that would be awesome.<\/p>\n
“If we can do it at Mt Smart which is a special home for us, we would love to do it there.<\/p>\n
“But if we can get more at Eden Park, we’ll take that too. We can’t control everything, as long as it’s in Auckland.” <\/p>\n
The need to accommodate more Warriors fans comes at a time of debate around whether a second New Zealand team should enter the NRL in 2029.<\/p>\n
Tuivasa-Sheck himself grew up in Auckland, and is the first to admit he could never have imagined a situation where the Warriors were the biggest ticket in town.<\/p>\n
“I think because rugby was so dominant in New Zealand, you couldn’t see that happening,” Tuivasa-Sheck said.<\/p>\n
“So just to see rugby league and all the schools and community behind it, it’s been awesome.<\/p>\n
“You come to New Zealand at the moment and you see all the ‘Up the Wahs’. It’s awesome.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The NRL is poised to force the Warriors to play a preliminary final at Eden Park if they…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":593383,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[111,139,577,69,213,3006],"class_list":["post-593382","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nrl","tag-nz","tag-sports","tag-warriors"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/593382","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=593382"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/593382\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/593383"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=593382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=593382"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=593382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}