Southland's Mr Events looks to the future
Lying awake at 4am, listening to the rain on the roof and wondering how many people won’t show up to your event because of the weather is something that Matt Sillars won’t miss.
Sillars stepped down as Sport Southland’s events manager last week after a decade of leading many of Southland’s most popular and high-profile events.
The ICC Surf to City - Southland’s biggest participation event - the 2011 Rugby World Cup games in Invercargill and the 2012 UCI junior world track cycling championships feature on his resume, but there are also a hundred other events, both little and large, which have benefited from his expertise and forthrightness.
Relationships built, friendships formed and the satisfaction of staging a wide range of quality, safe experiences for Southlanders to enjoy mean that Sillars moves on with a sense of satisfaction about a job well done.
Not that he’s retiring, or even taking a break from the events sector. Sillars will be working with Traffic Management Services and once the events calendar starts to recover post-Covid 19, will provide direct support for event organisers under the banner ‘Oreti Events’.
**********
The event industry changed forever in New Zealand in 2001 when a pregnant cyclist was hit and killed while participating in Le Race in Christchurch.
Events across the country were thrown into doubt, including the annual Surf to City in Invercargill.
Le Race owner Astrid Andersen was found guilty of criminal nuisance and fined - but her conviction was later quashed by the Court of Appeal.
When the coroner’s report came out nearly a year later, Sillars poured through the 30-page document – he still has the file on his computer – and then went to see Gerry Forde to have a chat about getting the ‘Surf’ back up and running.
“Astrid got hung out higher than most because the judge said that as a professional event organiser they expected a higher standard of her than a community set up.”
For five years, Sillars, Grant Baker and Bruce Halligan ran the Surf to City and the Festival of Running, including the long-running Southland marathon, from Riverton to Invercargill.
“We used to have a flat trailer with 10 signs and a few cones and that got us from Riverton to here, no crossing marshals or anything, people just used their common sense and did their own thing,” Sillars said.
Event organisers have a saying about the 10 percent of the population who are challenged when it comes to common sense. At any event, that number might jump to 20 percent, and 90 percent of an event organiser’s job will be planning for that 20 percent.
With his experience running athletics events, and adventure and multisport events with the Southland Triathlon and Multisport Club, Sillars was well placed to take over running events for Sport Southland from Richard Pasco in 2010.
The following year he and Sally Marr led the volunteer effort as Invercargill hosted three Rugby World Cup matches.
“It was a whole ball of fun with Sally and I. We had to recruit, train, uniform and then manage about 150 volunteers."
The role included ensuring fans didn’t steal off with merchandise, or the highly sought-after volunteer uniforms, as well as ensuring the marque which was volunteer HQ didn’t blow away from the Rugby Park carpark.
The next year Invercargill hosted the UCI junior world track cycling championships and Sillars again played a key role.
One of his jobs was ferrying ashen-faced international riders and management to ILT Stadium Southland. Their fears had grown increasingly larger as the planes they hopped on between Auckland and Invercargill became decreasingly smaller.
Their mood did not improve when Sillars had to inform them that their bikes were arriving separately by courier.
“I quickly worked out that the best thing was to bring them straight to into the stadium and show them this Schuermann-built velodrome,” Sillars recalled.
“I had the glory of explaining that their bikes weren’t actually on that plane and would be coming on a courier van overnight and would be in the lock-up in the morning. The Japanese management just about cried when they realised that the bikes weren’t there.
“It took just about the whole tournament to develop trust with the teams that they could leave their bikes in the velodrome and they wouldn’t be stolen. I worked out a compromise where I went and got a long chain and a big padlock and locked them all together.”
Big international events are one thing, but there are three local events which hold a special place in Sllars’ heart – here’s what he had to say about them.
The Kepler Challenge:
“The thing I like about the Kepler, I did it four times and then went back as a sweeper. Then next minute I’m the manager of the sweepers and I’ve been doing that for seven or eight years now. That's pretty cool because it’s like a mate’s weekend. I love the Kepler because it’s the biggest event by far that I know of where nobody clips the ticket, it’s all purely voluntary.”
The SBS Bank Tour of Southland:
“The tour is just a buzz. It’s a slog, but you just run on adrenaline. It’s a 70-hour week, driving 2200km, putting out three-quarters of a ton of gear and packing it up every day. Get up in the morning and repeat. Again, there are a heap of volunteers who have been doing it for years and the atmosphere is great. No two tours are the same, you get fried on stage one and hailed on and blown to bits later in the week.”
The Westpac Chopper Appeal Ride:
“The Westpac, I just love the cause. I’ve spent a lot of time in the hills and appreciate what those guys do. It’s probably my favourite cause, I suppose, and a great bunch of guys with Murray Heath, Andrew Moreton and Reece McDonald. I’ve got to know two-thirds of the riders, although it’s hard to tell who they are when they roar past in their cycling gear.”
