Council will not face fine over playing surface at McLean Park

An excavator, one of seven machines on-site, gets down to the dirty work at McLean Park. Photo / Warren Buckland

Super Rugby governing body Sanzaar is not planning any action over concerns about the field which was prepared for last Friday night's match between the Hurricanes and the Sharks.

On Friday Sanzaar media and communications manager Greg Thomas said the organisation was "not happy" that the field was not up to the standard they would have expected for the game.

But yesterday he effectively kicked the matter to touch when he confirmed the stance, as the possibly offending pitch was starting to disappear in a revamp begun just three days after the match under the same sort of conditions which troubled some of its events: Delayed by rain.

Excavation to a depth of about half-a-metre started on time on Monday but halted amid the falling of a metric inch of rain on Tuesday.

Late yesterday, with pools of water on the asphalted and concrete perimeter, the oval had been gouged to about 20m out from the Harris Stand frontage, including an area at the centre of the scrapping of a February 2017 limited-overs transtasman cricket match which resulted in other matches scheduled for the park being transferred elsewhere and plans for turf replacement brought forward by the Napier City Council.

Several hundred truckloads of material are to be trucked in and out of the park during the excavation, drainage replacement, and filling with a new base and hybrid all-weather turf.

The work will continue through the winter, aiming to have the park ready a few weeks into the Hawke's Bay Magpies' national provincial championship schedule in August and September, and for major cricket matches next summer.