All the sport on at Eden Park this weekend, ranked

Three different sporting codes share the same venue over the space of four days. Here’s how they all stack up.

Is it too late to reschedule Friday night’s Warriors game to a Sunday afternoon kickoff at Eden Park? This is all it would take to create a total sporting eclipse: four different sports back-to-back at the same stadium in as many days. 

As it stands, this weekend’s partial sporting eclipse – three different sports in four days (including a double-header!) – is still a rare and remarkable phenomenon. Spare a thought for Eden Park’s groundspeople, who will have fewer than 24 hours to transform the stadium from a cricket ground on Friday night to a rugby ground on Saturday night, then quickly turn around a Fifa-approved football pitch for Monday night’s World Cup qualifier. 

Any bragging rights earned from this feat will be short-lived, however – Wellington’s Sky Stadium is hosting an almost identical three-sports-in-four-days spectacle just a couple of days later. But for now let’s turn our attention to how the hallowed turf of our national stadium holds up to the rigours of three different sports in four days, and how each event in the weekend’s carnival of codes ranks in terms of rarity, novelty and significance.

4. New Zealand v Pakistan, Men’s T20I, 7.15pm Friday

Outside of ICC tournaments (and honestly, even then…) the endless churn of international cricket feels hard to get excited about these days. International tours used to mean something, or at least followed some kind of order – Pakistan literally just toured here a year ago and the only thing anyone is likely to remember about that series is how heroically rotund their wicketkeeper was… and he’s not even in the squad this time.

But I’m trying to practice radical acceptance of the meaninglessness of it all, and part of that involves taking a Pokemon trainer’s view when it comes to understrength Black Caps teams: gotta catch ‘em all, the more obscure players plucked from the Central Districts contract list the better. And while the squad for this series is not quite a full New Zealand B – more like New Zealand A-minus – it still features a few rare fringe figures / cult heroes, none greater than my idol Jacob “Duffman” Duffy, the first Southland-born Black Cap since Jeff Wilson.

Cheapest adult ticket: $43.50 (includes bonus White Ferns match – see below)

3. Blues v Crusaders, Super Rugby Pacific, 7.05pm Saturday

A quick glance at the table after five rounds might lead you to believe the Crusaders (3-1) are good again, the Blues (1-4) are bad again and natural order has been restored to the Super Rugby ecosystem. But a closer look reveals it’s not quite that simple – two of the Crusaders’ wins have come against Australian opponents, two of the Blues’ losses have been by one point, and both sides have beaten the Hurricanes (sorry John Campbell).

All of this sets up an intriguing and tantalising instalment of New Zealand franchise rugby’s greatest rivalry. Whoever wins on Saturday night can officially claim to be “back” and has a reasonable claim to being the second best New Zealand team in the competition after the Chiefs. And whoever loses can blame the fact the pitch was used for cricket not 24 hours prior. 

Cheapest adult ticket: $25.00

2. New Zealand v Australia, Women’s T20I, 2.45pm Friday

It doesn’t seem remotely controversial to suggest the main event of Friday’s cricket double-header is in fact the curtain raiser with the inauspicious start time of 2.45pm. New Zealand v Australia is a fixture that will always transcend international cricket’s vast meaninglessness, and the White Ferns have a close-to-full-strength squad available for their first match at Eden Park since a one-wicket loss to England knocked them out of the ODI World Cup three years ago. 

Exactly which White Ferns side shows up on Friday afternoon adds another layer of mystery and excitement: will it be the White Ferns that lost 10 games in a row last year and earlier this month struggled to a tied T20 series at home against Sri Lanka? Or the White Ferns that ended 2024 by winning the T20 World Cup? This team might be our greatest sporting enigma right now, and if that’s not a drawcard I don’t know what is. 

Cheapest adult ticket: $43.50 (includes bonus Black Caps match – see above)

1. TBC v TBC, Fifa World Cup qualification final, 7pm Monday

Auckland football fans are getting the full Wellingtonian experience this year, first finding out what it’s like to be home to a winning A League franchise (see: Wellington Phoenix last season) and now getting to host the match that could send the All Whites to the World Cup. 

Fifa’s expansion of the tournament from 32 to 48 teams in 2026 means Oceania’s allocation has increased from 0.5 to 1.5 spots, removing the need for a tricky intercontinental playoff and in theory handing New Zealand the easiest World Cup qualification route on the planet (short of hosting the tournament ourselves). 

Assuming the All Whites can defeat a Roy Krishna-less Fiji in Wellington in the semifinal on Friday night (and what an insanely funny upset it’d be if they don’t), they’ll face either New Caledonia or Tahiti at Eden Park, a venue where their all-time record is played four, lost four. 

It may not quite match the intensity of Wellington’s famous Bahrain qualifier in 2009 (or the crowd of the Football Ferns v Norway in 2023), but whatever the teams, and whatever the result, something historic is going to happen at Eden Park on Monday night. 

Cheapest adult ticket: $25.45