Phoenix logoThe first Wel­ling­ton Phoenix home pre-sea­son game has been moved for the second time. Ori­gin­ally announced for the Basin Reserve, at some point it was switched to New­town Park and now, accord­ing to the offi­cial site it has been moved to West­pac Sta­di­um due to “con­cerns that New­town Park would not have the capa­city to cope with the big crowd expec­ted.”

Sunday at 2.00pm is kick-off time and the tick­ets are only $10 (and free for under 16s). Oppos­i­tion Sydney FC are one of the A‑League glam­our sides (former Liv­er­pool and Eng­land star Rob­bie Fowl­er was over there dis­cuss­ing terms for a move last week) and should give the Phoenix a test.

I’m gut­ted the match has been moved from the Basin as I wanted to tell the story of the last time there was a major foot­ball match there back in 1994 (maybe). The All Whites were play­ing an exhib­i­tion match against top Ger­man out­fit Wer­der Bre­men and legend Wyn­ton Rufer was going to play a half for each side. As is so often the case, far more people turned up than expec­ted and most of us were still queuing out­side when the game kicked off. Any­way, a young lady in one of the flats above the trophy shop oppos­ite decided to ease our pain a little by lift­ing her t‑shirt over her head and giv­ing us a flash. But, I’ll have to tell that story some oth­er time.

If you are a Google Cal­en­dar user you can click on the but­ton below to sub­scribe to my Wel­ling­ton Phoenix fix­tures cal­en­dar, let­ting you know when and where the lads will be play­ing each week­end so you can either get your tick­ets or set your MySky.