Final word: The party's at our place (or Hamilton)

James Griffin.

Opinion

Party central. Forget the burgeoning catalogue of cock-ups surrounding it as a concept, the very name is an embarrassment. "Party central" sounds like what a bunch of 14-year-olds would call the bedroom where they're hiding out, having just liberated three beers from the adult party going on in the rest of the house. "This is party central, man! And we're going to get way-sted."

I mean, seriously, if you were looking for a night out in Auckland and someone suggested going to a place called Party Central, wouldn't any self-respecting person be, like, "is there nowhere else we can go?"

But thanks to our esteemed Prime Minister, who indeed has about him the air of a waggish schoolboy who would steal his dad's beer at the party if his Cabinet mates dared him to, we are lumbered with the phrase "party central". And thanks to New Zealand's deal with the Old English Devils (aka the IRB) we are contractually bound to provide a "fan zone" for the Rugby World Cup; a place where packs of drunken English supporters can call themselves Barmy and sing their silly little songs while remaining steadfastly oblivious to the fact every other rugby-playing nation on Earth hates their boring bloody team.

Now to me, from my position of ignorance as a normal person, this seems a relatively easy task: to find somewhere in Auckland where lots of people can drink and watch sport on television. We are, in effect, being asked to organise a piss-up in a city that is essentially a great big brewery. And between Mike Lee and the ARC and Murray McCully and every other bugger sticking their nose in, we can't do it. It is no wonder the rest of the country is laughing at Auckland even harder than they usually do. Shame.

The time has come, I'm afraid, to apply some drastic thinking to this party central problem, before the whole world, not just the whole country, is wetting themselves at tales of Auckland's ineptitude. My suggestions to stop this happening are as follows:

1. Build a big fence around the Viaduct Basin. Herd all the rugby supporters in there for the duration of the tournament or until their credit cards are declined. They will all be assigned a bar within the Viaduct precinct as their home bar, which they must defend against raiding parties from other bars. They will be allowed out to go to matches involving their country of origin, but: (a) they will have been computer-chipped to track them if they try to escape and party among the civilised people; and (b) their credit cards will be kept at their home bar so they won't be able to go far if they do evade the tracking technology.

2. Given that the suburbs in and around Eden Park are going to be chaos central anyway, why not turn them into party central as well? This way we get to herd all the rugby supporters into one place, whether they have tickets or not, which minimises their impact on the rest of the population. The ones who do have tickets get to go to the game, obviously, while the ones who don't are invited into the houses round Eden Park for a few beers, maybe a sausage roll or two and to watch on the TV. It's a very casual, very hospitable, very Kiwi way of doing things.

3. If the good people of Mt Eden, Kingsland and Sandringham baulk at inviting hordes of rugby supporters into their already troubled homes, then we post an online list of all the people renting out their houses in the hope of making a World Cup killing and we declare those to be legitimate party central venues. Then we get hordes of boy racers in their stupid cars to drive the rugby supporters round while everyone texts everyone else about where the best party central is that night. Then everyone converges on one house, probably on the North Shore, until the riot squad are called in and everyone throws bottles at them. Again this is a distinctly Kiwi party memory the visitors to our shores can take home with them.

4. If none of the above finds any level of approval, then Hamilton isn't very far away - yet also far enough away.

5. Oh, and if any supporter, from any country, shows up wherever party central ends up being, with one of those stupid trumpet things from the 2010 Fifa World Cup, then they shall be extradited without trial, after a full body search at Customs that results in the insertion of said trumpet as a parting gesture.

And there you have it, some more wonderful ideas about party central.

The best thing about these ideas is, no matter how stupid they seem, they're just as good as the ones we've had so far.