Before yesterday, I can honestly say I’d never heard the word grouse.  

Well, actually that’s not true, I’d heard the word grouse. I knew it as a bird. As game for a hunter.  

But I’d never heard it used in the slang form.  

“It is grouse,” said Christchurch Mayor, Phil Mauger, as he cut the ribbon in his city’s brand new $683m stadium.  

So long as you mean it’s excellent, I thought, then I’m with you Phil.  

I was born and raised in Christchurch. I’ll always have an affection for the ‘03 that comes from having had a great childhood based in a place. It’s never been perfect, but it’ll always be home.  

We could see the old stadium from our family home. The first time I was ever on TV was while sitting with my dad on the old embankment at Lancaster Park for a test between Pakistan and New Zealand in February 1994. The cameraman came and got a little cutaway shot of us, and the next day at school various people excitedly came to tell me. 

There’s no doubting the new stadium is a huge upgrade. Lancaster Park (or Jade Stadium as it was) was in a semi-industrial spot in the city fringes. At Te Kaha, you walk across the road and you’re straight into the bars and restaurants. If you had the wrong seat at Jade Stadium, you’d pounded by the cruel Easterly. Te Kaha’s roof means there are no such concerns. 

I often feel as though I have the experience of viewing Christchurch as a sort of time lapse. I know the city, I’m there fairly often, but I’m not living it every day. It means I get an interesting sense of progress. 

Even for someone on the outside, progress has been agonizingly slow. For the longest time, it was measured only in empty lots. Of the 17 anchor projects defined back in 2012, none was delivered to the original timeframe. 

But they have been delivered, and almost all of them are excellent. Te Pae, the convention centre, is fantastic. Tūranga, the central library is surely one of the country’s best. Add to it Parakiore, the metro sports facility, the Canterbury University rebuild, the new QEII, the Margaret Mahy playground… there are so many great public facilities in the city, and each of them is better than the one it replaced.   

There have just been two outstanding projects. The Christchurch Cathedral, and what I suppose could be described as a cathedral of a different kind.  

The thing about Te Kaha is that by design, it brings the greatest number of people together, whether for Six60 or yet another Super Rugby title.  

For so many years, Christchurch was sad and sorry. But Te Kaha’s completion, costly as it may have been, is such a big milestone. It’s more than a stadium. It’s more than a construction project. It is the crowning of what is surely most vibrant city in the country. It is grouse. To those who’ve lived through it all and are counting down the days to their first match at Te Kaha… enjoy being envied. You deserve it.