Football Travel: Wellington Phoenix

In his latest guest post, Andrew Williams visits Wellington Phoenix from the New Zealand capital to see how the round ball game is going in the rugby code’s top country.

The Westpac Stadium on Waterloo Quay, along Wellington’s industrial harbourside, is the main home of the Wellington Phoenix, New Zealand’s only professional football club.

Rising just above the railway buildings, shipping containers, grey concrete motorways and substations it sits between, the ‘Cake Tin’ as it’s known by locals because of its shape and metal exterior, is often well under capacity.

Its tenants, the Phoenix, have played in Australia’s A-League since 2007, when the club replaced the now defunct Auckland-based New Zealand Knights. They are the only overseas franchise in the division, which is organised by the Football Federation Australia (FFA).

Success in the A-League provides entry to the Asian Champions League. Although under league regulations set out by the FFA, the Phoenix currently aren’t eligible to compete in the continental competition because they play in a separate league in a different confederation.

New Zealand is in the Oceania Football Confederation (OFC) along with Fiji, Tong, Samoa and others. Because of their participation in the FFA-organised A-League, the Phoenix are in limbo between confederations, with regulations seeing that you won’t see them compete in the FIFA Club World Cup against the UEFA and CONMEBOL Champions.

Instead, New Zealand amateur teams qualify to play in the OFC Champions League (known as the O-League), with the winners of that competition qualifying for the Club World Cup. It’s bizarre, but Team Wellington, the city’s amateur team, were one game away from facing Real Madrid in the final of 2014 competition.

Attendances fluctuate wildly for Phoenix fixtures during the season which runs from October to April. There are usually plenty of empty yellow seats for matches in the ten-team division — whether against Melbourne City FC, the club owned by City Football Group (CGC), or Newcastle Jets, where English striker Emile Heskey was contracted between 2012-14.

Despite its 34,500 capacity, just 4,829 watched an A-League game against Perth Glory in December 2018. Attendance levels depend on the team’s form. The record attendance for a Phoenix match at the Westpac Stadium is 32,792, in a match against Newcastle Jets in March 2010.

Despite a 28% upturn in attendances during the 2018/19 season compared to 2017/18, the Westpac is evidently much too big to host Phoenix matches.

This had led to the Phoenix becoming somewhat nomadic, with the highest attendance during the 2018/19 season coming during a home game at Auckland’s Eden Park against Melbourne Victory, the final game of a nine–game unbeaten run for the Phoenix.

Sustaining a professional football team in a nation of rugby and cricket lovers has also proved difficult when the population of the nation is less than five million – by comparison, London’s population is more than eight million.

Ultimately, the Phoenix’s A-League license agreed with the FFA is still in the balance, unless proves it is meeting certain metrics around team performance and match attendances, and the FFA approves league expansion plans.

The Wellington Phoenix Match Day Experience

The stadium, which opened in 2000, is visible from most vantage points in Wellington, for which there are many in a city likened to San Francisco for its hilly terrain. The New Zealand capital, situated at the southern tip of New Zealand’s North Island, gets battered by the wind. The Westpac is open to the elements, meaning the conditions play a factor in both event attendances and the outcomes of matches.

Walking to the stadium along the raised Fran Wilde Walkway behind Wellington railway station, the first things visible are four white floodlights rising above the main facade. Behind the stadium, freighter ships and interislander ferries come and go, while trains, visible on the left, head to the suburbs and towards the Hutt Valley. 

Phoenix supporters refer to the ground as the ‘Ring of Fire’. But a combination of low attendances and the stadium design, with supporters far away from the pitch so the multi-purpose arena can host cricket matches and other events, make the atmosphere tepid at best.

It’s only the Yellow Fever area of the stadium, a section set out for more vocal supporters, where numbers congregate, and noise and flags swirl in support of the team.

How to Visit Wellington Phoenix

Groundhopping down under is a little different to doing it in Europe because of the huge distances between countries and cities. But if you’re in Wellington during the A-League season, perhaps on a road trip, picking up tickets to Phoenix games is easy online, as it is for most sporting events in Auckland, Christchurch, and Dunedin.

Crowd numbers depend on the team’s form, and despite the season running during the summer, Wellington’s ever-changing weather conditions (mainly the wind), mean it’s best to be prepared by taking enough layers.