Review: One NZ Stadium’s opening night had everything - even the acoustics in the bathroom meant you didn't miss a thing

Sunday, 26 April 2026

One New Zealand Stadium roared on Friday night, with 25,237 fans packing under its fully covered roof for the Crusaders v Waratahs.

I have written more stories about One New Zealand Stadium than I care to count. By the time I walked through Gate F on Friday night, I half expected to feel nothing at all.

Instead, I got chills.

Fans pouring towards the stadium for the first major sporting event at the $683 million venue.

As a North Islander who moved to Christchurch in 2022, the 15-year journey to this moment wasn’t mine to carry. But after months of listening to Cantabrians describe the loss of Lancaster Park, the gap the earthquakes left and what this stadium meant, I understood the weight of opening night.

Press reporter Elsie Williams and friends at the stadium’s opening night on Friday.

Getting in was almost too easy. The concourse was a different story. Directed toward the central bar, we found ourselves in near-gridlock, which one punter I was shoulder to shoulder with summed up nicely: “well this is a bit of a f… up”. But within 20 minutes it had cleared. A first-night blip perhaps?

The first try at One New Zealand stadium, that Press reporter, Elsie Williams, missed.

We were through the gates well before 7pm, my friends adamant we couldn’t miss the haka, asking me no fewer than 10 times whether there would definitely be one. Taha Kemara led the surprise Crusaders’ haka that, following a pōwhiri and the gift of pounamu from Ngāti Waewae, genuinely raised the roof. One friend shed a tear — she also sometimes cries at cute cats, but this felt justified. A city that had played its rugby in a temporary facility for 15 years, finally in its own home.

We were in the Stables — the student ‘party’ section in the eastern stand — and despite likely being the cheapest tickets of the lot, the view was incredible. Every seat in the house puts you practically on the field. “I feel like I’m in a video game,” my friend Sophie said. Accurate.

The view from the Stables — the eastern student section. Every seat in the house puts you practically on the field.

Dallas McLeod made history as the stadium’s first tryscorer. I unfortunately missed it — but the celebratory music was loud enough inside the cubicles that even on the loo, you felt part of the action. I emerged to find the scoreboard had moved on. Such is life.

At half-time, Scribe — born and raised in Ōtautahi, debut album fittingly titled The Crusader — walked onto the field. “Congratulations Christchurch, you did it!” Two songs and he was done. The crowd wanted more.

In the Stables, you could count the people standing on one hand — and maybe a few toes. We were among them. My friend, surveying the quiet crowd around us, said what a few of us were thinking: “It’s crazy how little atmosphere there is in here.” Others around the stadium reported the opposite — roaring, electric. Depends where you sit perhaps? Though it is worth noting the friends criticising the atmosphere are also the same crew who attempted, and spectacularly failed, to start a Mexican wave. So perhaps it was the embarrassment talking.

The night had no shortage of rugby royalty either — we brushed shoulders with Kieran Read on the concourse, and my friend made a beeline for Piri Weepu, who he spotted from 100m away. A pic, or 25, was taken and just like that, his week was made.

While the price of a ticket was affordable (starting at $30 for an adult), if you kept up with the food and drinks inside, you might be packing a marmite sandwich the next time you went.

Stepping outside into a city absolutely humming — Dux Central turning people away after 1200 bookings, queues snaking outside every bar in the CBD — felt like the real opening night verdict.

After a year of writing about what this stadium could do for Christchurch, seeing it happen was something else entirely.