North Harbour Stadium ???? Seriously??? That is a shocking venue to choose for such a huge Worldwide event - its wide open to any wind and rain, bizarre seating that gets miles from the pitch, only 25K (with any more at the ends only having crap views), not accessible by decent transport and miles from anywhere decent to hang out! No fan-trails possible up there! Seriously, I'm not being Wellington-biased here but Westpac Stadium in Wellington is streets ahead of North Harbour Stadium in terms of a venue. Bigger capacity, sheltered, better seating all round the pitch and you can walk there from town which can have a big hyper-concentrated World Cup buzz going on. Hell you'd even be better off letting the final get hosted in Dunedin with its wicked stadium, city proximity and full-on university sector that would guarantee the visiting fans would have a blast they wouldn't forget in a hurry.
I'm amazed Fifa would go for North harbour really. Its kinda guaranteeing Auckland will under-do what should be our biggest event ever. At least Eden Park has some sort of conection to the city - but North Harbour Stadium - really? We are really misisng the boat with this.