Better access to park

Press, 22 June 1989, Page 3

Better access to park

By

DAVID CLARKSON

Access to the front of Lancaster Park’s new embankment is expected to ease the bottleneck for spectators in time for the Canterbury - Argentina rugby match on July 22. The Victory Park Board, which administers the ground, is also likely to provide more access from the street, one of two problem areas evident during the first French test last Saturday.

“It is a new embankment. We are on a learning curve, and we learnt a lot on Saturday,” said the secretary-manager of the board, Mr Allan Barrett. A board subcommittee discussed the matter yesterday, and will make recommendations to the next board meeting on July 13.

One of the recommendations will be to end the children’s enclosure at the southern end of the embankment.

Subject to the rugby union’s approval, the No. 5 stand at the southern end of the ground will become the children and families stand. Mr Barrett and board members saw the problem at the park for themselves during the test.

“What threw us was that there were 40,000 people there. That wasn’t expected,” he said.

“Go back 12 months, Wales, the five-nations champions drew 22,000 people. Last week-end France, now the fivenations champions, drew almost double that with a new embankment under test for the first time,” he said.

The proposals to the board will include feeding the crowd on to the embankment through entrances along the front. Last Saturday, the crowd reached the embankment by climbing 11 stairways along the back. However, the crowding close to the stairways apparently prevented late arrivals from reaching empty spots on the embankment. Mr Barrett said he had heard that many people left the ground because they could not get on to the embankment to see the match.