Trust to unveil sports park plans | Hawkes Bay News | Local News in Hawkes Bay

The Hawke's Bay Regional Sports Park Trust is about to release a blueprint plan of the next stage in its park development and there are suggestions rugby league could be one of the codes in the mix.

The trust's chairman Lawrence Yule would not say which sports the park would look to include in the next phase of the regional park's development, when the trust's annual plan was delivered to the Hastings District Council yesterday.

The trust had shelved its plan to build a tennis centre at the regional park on Percival Rd on the outskirts of Hastings. Its current focus was on completion of football pitches in time for the 2012 winter season.

And with athletics and netball accounted for at the park site, and rugby union, hockey and softball based at other parks, it just leaves rugby league as the only major sport in Hawke's Bay not accounted for in terms of a home park or central base to operate from.

Hawke's Bay Rugby League chairman Kevin Tamati said he was invited to a meeting to discuss the sport's use of the regional park about six months ago but he had not heard from the trust since.

"We had a talk about putting rugby league in the middle [inner section of the athletics track] but I felt that one park wasn't going to be enough, and that we would probably need more than two if we're going to grow and develop the sport."

Mr Tamati said he had asked the trust about using other areas around the regional park to develop into a pitch for rugby league.

At the moment the sport spread across two parks, at Whitmore Park in Napier and Kirkpatrick Park in Camberley, Hastings.

And its decision to move back into a winter code meant it was competing directly with rugby union when it came to booking parks for competitions.

Avenues to share grounds at Elwood Park with Hastings Rugby and Sports had fallen through while plans to develop Flaxmere's Chatham Park had also not come to fruition.

Mr Tamati said, "The future of the game concerns me, rugby league is starting to go to bed and we have to ask, does the sport have a future here?"

The trust, in its report to the council, said the sports park was at a crossroads, having unsuccessfully bid for government funding to build an indoor velodrome, and was now looking at "a range of alternative development options".

"Key criteria in the assessment will be the ability to raise capital funding and the financial viability of the facilities once developed.

"The trust expects to have this process complete towards the end of 2011 at which time it will brief funders."