It’s very easy to forget that events like the Wellington Sevens don’t just happen. There is a group of very busy, stressed and worn out individuals in the background who have the unenviable take of bringing this event to life. The man in charge of the whole operation, Tournament General Manager Marty Donoghue, was kind enough to give the media a few minutes of his time yesterday to chat about the Sevens and how the event has gone so far.
Wellington Sevens: Five Minutes with Marty Donoghue – Tournament GM
“[Today has] been great, I’ve just been around the majority of the concourse, and up on the field and up into the stands. We took Jonah [Lomu] up with us and the crowds were awesome. It’s got a good feel at the moment, except its a wee bit wet.” Donoghue commented when asked how the event has gone so far. The rain surprised everyone, including met service who had predicted fine weather for the whole weekend. “One thing we learned, we had ‘Wet Weather Plan’ written on our ops board prior to the event, and we rubbed it off. We won’t be doing that again” he adds with a grin. “There’s really not much you can do with the weather. Maybe get in some of those big Russian planes to deal with the rain.”
Ticket sales have been steady, with around 28,000 attendees at day one “I checked at about two o’clock today and around 200 of our day one tickets had sold as well, and we’re likely to be in a position to offer more.” Donoghue seeming happy with the numbers and the crowd attendance ” Were pretty close to being sold out.”
Asking about stand out moments in the tournament so far “There has been a stand out, but it was more of a negative really, we’re not going to mention that.” Donoghue replied with a wry smile, referencing the defeat of New Zealand at the hands of Fiji, which had happened shortly before the chat. I imagine seeing the thumping the Kiwis then went on to give Spain and France probably brightened the day for him however.
“Looking at the games coming up, I think we’re going to see some magical rugby. I don’t think anyone could have predicted some of these results we’ve seen so far.”
On having Jonah Lomu attending as the official ambassador for the Sevens event Donoghue commented ” Well, He’s Jonah. It’s quite funny really, there are people like us who know him, and remember watching him play. Then we took him down to see the ball boys, these kids are all 12 or 13 years old, and they’re treating him like the Messiah. They’ve never even seen him play, but they know it’s Jonah. It’s magical.”
Comparing the crowd volumes to last year Donoghue indicated it’s hard to really compare numbers, especially on day one “We get peaks and troughs, people come in for game one, then go and get something to eat or go and enjoy other aspects of the weekend. People then come back in later in the day, and it really isn’t until about Seven or eight o’clock that you really get that vibe going.”
“Looking at what we want to do in the future, especially as we look to Rio and the sevens growing, Women’s Sevens coming through there’s opportunities particularly in the early games to bring in more of the family element, get the school aged children involved more. We want to have a real big opening with them, Sevens is huge now, it’s going to get much bigger come the olympics.”
“Tonight [for example] we’re very lucky in that we’re going to see an exhibition game [from the New Zealand Women’s Sevens team].” This points to opportunities for even bigger growth as the Sevens world expands.
The crowds are always a big topic of conversation, and Donoghue had nothing but praise for his team of security personnel and volunteers “At this stage we did a security walk around, everyone was just out there having fun.”
A press release from Wellington Sevens management further supports the active management of the crowd and a lower tolerance for alcohol related issues, the crowds generally being well behaved,Wellington Free Ambulance event co-ordinator Ross Weddell said the service treated less than half the number of patients that came through on day one last year.
The level of organisation involved with bringing an event such as this to realisation is phenomenal, Donoghue has done a sensational job. The Sevens atmosphere is alive, electric and just flat out great fun, and it is a tribute to the hard work this team has put in behind the scenes.
My thanks to Marty Donoghue for making himself available to the media team and for answering all of our questions.
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Photo Credit: Kyle Willoughby
