New Zealand, in group A, are automatic entries as hosts while Fiji have qualified as the Oceania representatives.
The Kiwis play a double-header in the capital city from Friday, June 5.
Hughes intends to set up a Facebook page for footy lovers here to organise things such as carpooling and accommodation.
He was the team leader for the VIP gate of the Rugby World Cup.
"I'm waiting for my induction as team leader of spectator services in the Cricket World Cup," he said of the ICC one-day international 49-match tourney that New Zealand and Australia are co-hosting from February 19 to March 29 with the final in Melbourne.
He went to Wellington a fortnight ago for his induction in the Fifa event as the area co-ordinator of the local organising committee (LOC) that NZ Football appoints to run the tourney.
Hughes said at the induction he met people who were involved as members of the All Blacks and Olympics committees.
"They all expressed surprise that we weren't part of the Napier group because Hawke's Bay is a hotbed for soccer football in this country," he said, emphasising the Rovers club, which he became a member of since it merged as Napier City and Napier Rovers in 1973, was the most prominent provincial club in the country on account of more than three decades of competing at an elite level.
"It was very disappointing we aren't hosts this time," he said, suspecting the city's administrators probably underestimated the "scope and global importance of what is the third or fourth biggest competition in the world".
Former Napier mayor Barbara Arnott said in August last year it was up to Fifa why they had rejected McLean Park as a venue.
Arnott did concede, though, the Napier City Council probably didn't apply as much funding as Fifa had envisaged but also stated it was committed to hosting the three ICC trophy matches.
Hughes said "fulltime professionals and millionaires", such as Lionel Messi, played in the last U20 cup. "These guys earn in a month what an All Black earns in a year."
He fondly recalled McLean Park hosting Mexico, Spain, Ghana and Thailand during the Under-17 Fifa World Cup in 1999.
"The colour, noise, spectacle, atmosphere at McLean Park are still fresh in my mind because it was simply brilliant."
The Ghanaians arrived here minus their luggage so the Rovers club provided them its blue kit to train in.
Player Michael Essien went on to ply his trade for Chelsea and AC Milan.
Hughes arrived in the Bay in 1973 with wife Sheila and their sons, Kevin and Christopher, after the family decided to emigrate from Kent, England, because he had reached a dead end in his job with a fertilising company in his 30s.
An Englishman, who had returned from working for the now defunct HB Herald Tribune in Hastings, had returned to Kent where he was acquainted with Hughes' tennis club mate.
A few beers and chat later, the Hughes family decided if they were shifting why not overseas with Mt Maunganui and Awatoto (Napier) beckoning.
"Sheila said let's go to Napier for two years and then have a family meeting to stay here or go.
"We never had that family meeting," he said with a grin.
Their daughter, Kimberley, was born here in 1982 but lives in Wellington now. The sons are in Auckland.
An ex-grammar schoolboy in England, Hughes played rugby on Saturdays and football on Sundays.
The inaugural Bay United chairman helped start the summer franchise and was Rovers chairman for more than 15 years before retiring as the Southern Cross regional accounts manager.
