Local football’s big day at Napier’s McLean Park breaks 30-year drought

From left: Sponsor Simon Tremain, Port Hill United FC president Kate Maxwell, Napier City Rovers stalwart Will Stanger and Taradale's Mike Baldwin on Wednesday at the first local football match at McLean Park in 32 years. Photo / Doug Laing.

McLean Park has taken a big step towards more community sports events by hosting its first local football match in more than 30 years.

Napier and Gisborne boys’ high schools clashed on Wednesday as a prelude to an upcoming football day run by Marewa Park-based Port Hill United FC on June 20 (the Matariki public holiday).

Over the past three decades the ground has mainly hosted international rugby, rugby league and cricket, and Super Rugby and Magpies NPC games.

The Port Hill United event is part of the club’s year-long 50th anniversary.

McLean Park manager Dan Rodden says it’s part of a “two-prong approach” – the council wanting to get more events, including football, onto the park, and the club wanting to do something different.

Rodden said it’s something that costs the users more than their usual grounds.

However, club president Kate Maxwell said cost issues have been resolved with sponsorship from Tremains Real Estate.

Maxwell said the June 20 event would feature youth, masters, men’s premier and women’s first division teams.

“We’re proud to be delivering it as a celebration of the football community in Hawke’s Bay,” she said.

“It’s a grassroots-driven day that has come together quickly, with strong support from council, multiple clubs, local businesses, and Central Football.”

The New Zealand Football Association is also expecting to be represented among the crowd.

Rodden said with growing support for football in New Zealand, and the presence of Wellington Phoenix (men and women’s sides) and Auckland FC in the transtasman professional league, there were increasing opportunities for bigger matches at McLean Park.

Apart from the football day and the Hawke’s Bay club rugby finals on July 11-12, the only events currently booked for the park this year are the Hawke’s Bay Magpies five home NPC rugby matches, starting in August.

The council is awaiting release of international cricket schedules for the summer.

Local football was possibly the first sport played on the park, in 1910.

However, the last time a Hawke’s Bay football side played there was when Napier City Rovers beat Christchurch Rangers 6-0 in 1993 in the first of three consecutive Chatham Cup national knockout finals on the ground.

There has since been other football at McLean Park in the form of seven matches in the Fifa 1999 Under-17 men’s World Cup tournament, a men’s A-League match between Wellington Phoenix and Newcastle Jets in 2013, and a Football Ferns friendly against Vietnam before the Women’s World Cup tournament in New Zealand in 2023.

In March, the Hawke’s Bay cricket Twenty20 finals were played on the park, as they were in 2024.