New surface at Porritt Park by next year?

Press, 17 December 1985, Page 44

New surface at Porritt Park by next year?

By

KEVIN TUTTY

An artificial surface at Porritt Park took a large step towards reality yesterday with the announcement of a grant of $300,000 from the New Zealand Lottery Board.

Canterbury men’s and women’s hockey associations, which lost a battle with Wellington two years ago for a $500,000 Government grant enabling Wellington to install the first artificial surface in New Zealand, should have their new surface next year. The field at Porritt Park will be the third in New Zealand. Wellington’s has been in use for a year and work started late last month on the second surface at Kensington Park; Whangarei. A surface at Porritt Park was dependent on the grant from the Lottery Board. It will provide more than half the cost. The two hockey associations will contribute $125,000 and the Christchurch City Council $105,000. The City Council has ap-

proved its portion of the grant and the hockey associations have raised about $30,000 of their contribution. In its budget for the surface and other improvements including lighting, the City Council had allowed $274,500 from grants and sponsorship. The Lottery Board grant has more than covered that. It is believed that the grant is part of the $1 million set aside three years ago for a national training centre at Queen Elizabeth II Park. That scheme has since collapsed. Artificial surfaces have a high imported content, and it is ironic that the grant has been made at a time when the value of the New Zealand dollar has fallen dramatically. The president of the Canterbury Hockey Association,, Mr John Morse, said

last evening that he hoped initial work on the new field would start early in the New Year.

Mr Morse had a message for clubs and players in the association: “I hope that players and administrators have the faith in the sport that the City Council and the Lottery Board have shown. It is probably the most dramatic time in the association’s history and the acid is on us to get an administrative team to run the sport.” He was referring to the annual meeting of the C.H.A. which had to be ajourned earlier this month because insufficient nominations were received for the management committee. “If we don’t make it now, we can confine ourselves to being a second rate sport for the rest of our lives,” Mr Morse said.