Mayor backs world rugby sevens plans
24 April 2013
Mayor Kevin Winters is backing plans to make the Bay of Plenty the world centre of sevens rugby.
Coming on top of the earlier decision for Rotorua to host the national Sevens tournament from next year as a lead-in to the Rio Olympics, this presents an outstanding opportunity for the whole region, he said.
His comments follow an announcement this week that the Bay of Plenty Rugby Union and Bay of Connections have joined forces to develop a strategy that would see the region established as the international home of sevens rugby development.
The strategy focuses on seven key areas:
- Tournaments and events
- International standard facilities
- High performance facilities and programmes
- Sevens educational hub
- Recreational and team-building hosting programmes
- International programme development
- Funding development
Mr Winters described the potential opportunities for the city and for the whole region from the proposal as being as big as our imaginations and simply unlimited.
If these plans take off, as I'm certain they will, then they'll provide compelling justification for Rotorua and the Bay of Plenty to stake a claim to yet another area of international excellence, complementing our existing global reputation for the likes of mountain biking, international tourism and indigenous culture.
I congratulate everyone involved in this collaborative effort to make our region the world centre for rugby sevens. It's the culmination of a lot of very hard work behind the scenes by a determined committee over the last 12 months or so.
Our city will certainly get right behind these proposals and do whatever we can to ensure they are successful, as we have done with other major sporting proposals in the past, said Mr Winters