SBW: Mount sports centre among best in NZ

All Blacks Sevens coach Sir Gordon Tietjens chats to Sonny Bill Williams after a training session at Blake Park yesterday. Photo / Andrew Warner

The All Blacks Sevens squad are in Mount Maunganui this week preparing for their next two tournaments in Hong Kong and Singapore and have been enjoying the new facilities on offer.

Tauranga property developer and Waikato University council member Paul Adams got a chance to watch the squad in action at the new High Performance Sports Centre on Monday and got a photo with Sonny Bill Williams.

Mr Adams said Mount Maunganui-based coach Sir Gordon Tietjens invited him to come down to the centre to see the team training.

"I went over there for a couple of hours to watch them go through their paces," he told the Bay of Plenty Times. "The sevens guys think it's a great facility. Sonny Bill said to me it's as good as there is in New Zealand."

Waikato University had signage rights at the High Performance Sports Centre for five years, naming rights for 15 years and the right to be the centre's exclusive tertiary education partner and research provider for 15 years.

The team are in the city this week preparing for the next two tournaments of the HSBC Sevens World Series in Hong Kong (April 8-10) and Singapore (April 16-17).

The team for Hong Kong would be named tomorrow and would leave New Zealand on Saturday.

The All Blacks Sevens were third in the series, two points behind leader Fiji. They were in Pool A for Hong Kong and would play Samoa, France and Kenya.