East Auckland’s biggest field sport says local facilities cannot keep up with its growth, ranking Howick fifth of Auckland’s 20 local boards for priority upgrades.
Northern Region Football’s presentation to the Howick Local Board warns of a “worrying trend to limit football growth” and asks for floodlights and field upgrades across five local parks.
The sport’s deputation was delivered by Carl Fenton, Northern Region Football’s Head of Clubs and Community Engagement, at the Board’s June meeting.
Fenton says the organisation is 73 clubs strong with 42,000 members playing 16,000 matches a year, with 38 per cent of all registered football players in New Zealand.
Football is “larger than all other field codes combined”, says Fenton, and accounts for up to 60 per cent of council sports field bookings.
The game has grown 24 per cent in five years, he says, with girls’ and women’s participation up 45 per cent.
Fenton says the demand from ratepaying residents is high, “however the allocation of space and investment isn’t meeting this demand”.
The region is short 1,177 hours of floodlit training space every week, he says, and “the quality of the field space can be poor and inaccessible”.
For Howick, Fenton names Fencibles United and Bucklands Beach as clubs with about 3,000 participants between them, a large female player base, a large deficit in floodlit field hours and challenges with pitch quality.
His specific requests are floodlights at Greenmount Park, further floodlighting on the sand based fields at Lloyd Elsmore Park, Meadowland Park and Millhouse Park, upgrades to the soil based fields and changing rooms at Riverhills Reserve, and completion of groundwork at Ostrich Farm to establish sports field platforms with allocations for football.
Some of that list overlaps work already moving, with Ostrich Farm development funded in the Board’s 2026/2027 work programme approved at the same meeting.
Fenton also asks the Board to advocate for investment in the Council’s bookings and parks teams and for reallocation of underused field space.
The Board thanked Fenton for the deputation as it continues its three yearly Local Board planning processes.
