Kerre Woodham: Please come to the party

The First XV want everyone to help make visitors welcome. Photo / Jay Farnworth

I was a bit bemused when I received a letter from Len Brown late last year asking if I'd like to be one of his 1st XV - people who would champion Auckland and the opportunities the city will offer during the Rugby World Cup.

It was a very nice letter, but apparently I'd been asked because I was "a respected member of the community with far reaching influence". Well, no. Not really.

If Len Brown had looked through some back copies of the Herald on Sunday he would have seen I'd been quite rude about him on a couple of occasions in the lead up to the Auckland Super City mayoral elections - not that it made a blind bit of difference. People ignored me in their droves and he romped home.

So I wasn't sure I was really qualified to be in the 1st XV. Still, some mates of mine had been asked and I love my footy so I thought, why not?

And just to clear things up, we're doing this for free. There's hasn't even been the hint of a promise of a ticket to any of the Eden Park games. So this hasn't cost ratepayers a cent.

Hopefully we'll do some good as chief cheerleaders for the city and the Cup. It will be one hell of a party. There'll be Fanzones in Auckland, Albany, Henderson and Manukau; there'll be a number of cultural festivals held throughout the six weeks of the Cup; and even the 4km walk from Queen Elizabeth Square to Eden Park will be fun with activity and entertainment planned at numerous points along the route.

Different suburbs of Auckland have adopted various teams - Grey Lynn and Ponsonby have baggsed Samoa and Tonga, who'll be training at Western Springs Stadium, and Silverdale will be hosting Japan. North Shore's got the French team who'll be training at the Onewa Domain and it's a Shore thing Les Bleus will be given a traditional Shore girl welcome.

All we have to do to make this Cup a world class event, will be to have a good time and make all our visitors as welcome as possible. They'll be just like us when we travel - they'll want to meet the locals, go off the beaten track and have the time of their lives.

So even if you're not a huge footy fan, your friendliness and your knowledge of the city and your good manners will be invaluable in providing our tens of thousands of international visitors, and many thousands of fellow Kiwis, with the ultimate experience.

And if you're still purse-lipped about the whole event, and sniping over your sauvignon about boofhead fans and how much it's costing, please - rent out your house to people who want to be here and bugger off. Nobody likes a party pooper and this will be one for the city, and the country, to remember.