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Mt Smart Stadium - Penrose, Auckland (NZ)

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Also known as: Ericsson Stadium
Ground Details: Mt Smart Stadium is Auckland Regional Council's premier sporting venue. It is part of the regional parks network and belongs to the residents and ratepayers of the Auckland region.

The stadium hosts a wide variety of users. It is home of the Vodafone Warriors rugby league team and the Counties Manukau Steelers rugby team.

Mt Smart Stadium is also used by athletics clubs and Oceania soccer, for rugby sevens and touch rugby and for numerous entertainment events. For more than a decade it has hosted the Big Day Out music festival.

The ground used to be known as Ericsson Stadium between March 1995 and July 2006 before reverting back to its original name of Mt Smart Stadium.

HISTORY
Mt Smart Stadium, which is an Auckland Regional Park, originally consisted of a volcanic hill 86 meters high, called "Rarotonga" (which means "below south"). The hill was named Mt Smart after Captain Henry Dalton Smart, who is believed to have been associated with the surveyor General of the day.

Old photographs show that the cone had many Maori built terraces forming a defended occupation site, typical of many on the Auckland isthmus. The volcanic cone was quarried from the 1880's to the 1980's, originally for ballast for NZ Railways. In 1937 Mt Smart (Rarotonga) Domain Board was created. In 1953 the board approved a plan for the stadium site and the basic formation work was completed in 1965. The stadium was officially opened in 1967, at which time facilities consisted of the No.2 Grandstand, a cinder athletics track and the northern toilet block. The cinder track was replaced by a rubberised 'Tartan' track in 1975.

The stadium was further extensively developed to accommodate the XIV Commonwealth Games in 1990. This development included the construction of the number 2 Arena (now the Mt Smart Athletics Stadium), the laying of Rekortan synthetic tracks in both stadiums and the construction of the West Stand in the No1 Arena (now the Mt Smart Football Stadium). In early 1994, further development of Mt Smart Stadium was approved by the council to accommodate Winfield Cup Rugby League. The New Zealand Warriors first game was held on 10 March 1995.

The Mt Smart Football Stadium playing field has been re-configured and extended to accommodate rugby league and rugby union in addition to soccer by using removable material to grow across the running track surface at both ends and the western side of the field. The field has been further levelled and upgraded to ensure that it is able to withstand sustained heavy use under any weather conditions.

The addition of a new 8,000 capacity East Stand, completed in January 2005, has further improved the facilities by providing an additional 5,000 covered seats, a new club lounge for up to 1,000 patrons and a gymnasium and office base for the New Zealand Warriors. The seats and seat frames from the old East Stand have also been re-configured to provide a new temporary North Stand with numbered, pre-sellable seats for a further 5,000 patrons. This stand is de-mountable for the summer season to provide a hard-standing area for the staging for outdoor entertainment events such as the Big Day Out. With this stand in place, the stadium is able to accommodate 25,000 patrons, all in numbered seats, of which approximately 9,500 are under cover.

The football stadium is also equipped with floodlighting of the required standard to allow night games to be broadcast by television. Numerous permanent and re-locatable catering and merchandising sales outlets have also been provided in all areas of the stadium by the venue's concessionaires. These have been progressively upgraded to improve both the service to patrons and the range of foods, beverages and products available.

Source: www.mtsmartstadium.co.nz
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