What a brilliant night the British and Irish Lions v Barbarians game at Toll Stadium was recently – it was simply fantastic to see the old Okara Park full to the gunnels, with white flags regularly lighting up the night and even Mexican waves doing multiple rounds.

The atmosphere down at the park on the day, and around the city leading up to, and after, the game, was absolutely electric, something that I cannot recall since the heady days of North Auckland’s two Ranfurly Shield eras back in the 70s (apart from those couple of Rugby World Cup games we had in 2011).

The eyes of the world were on our beautiful region, and the economic benefit across the board would have been huge. And once again it would have promoted sport and recreation in a big way to our young people – there is nothing like having role models up close and live to encourage them to be more active.

It certainly made me think how exciting and captivating it is to be in a big sporting crowd where there is a genuine festival atmosphere. You get it regularly in international test matches involving the likes of the All Blacks, but very rarely do you get it at provincial level.

And there’s a thought – maybe Northland Rugby is now in a position to bid for early-season All Black games, given the success of the 2011 Rugby World Cup, the 2015 FIFA U20 World Cup and the Lions game. I can recall the ABs playing an internal tour game against North Auckland in about 1973, but apart from that we have not seen the national team from our national sport playing in Northland.

The time is right for that to change.

As already stated, the holding of the Ranfurly Shield can also engender that feeling in a big crowd, but outside of that it is a rarity in the regions. Why is that? Why can we not get even get a quarter of that number along to a Northland game these days at that very same stadium?

It makes you wonder how much better our Northland team would go in the Mitre 10 Cup with a revved up crowd behind them, urging them on. But I guess this Lions tour game has been the culmination of an intense build-up over a few years since Whangarei was announced as one of only 6 venues to host a game across the country.

Being part of history is also an enticing thing for people, and obviously that has a major bearing on why many, many people who would not normally ever attend a Northland game would have gone along to this game.

But even so, is it a chance for Northland Rugby to try something a bit different to capitalise on what occurred at Toll, so more Northlanders can come along and support their own team this year?

You betcha.