Resthills Sports

08/10/2026

Thank you to The Packaging Forum for your incredible support and belief in our Game On Rubbish Gone! initiative, providing the vital funding for outdoor ♻ recycling Rotaform wheelie bins.

This support allows us to step into our role as kaitiaki of Resthills Park during local, regional, and national sports events, while establishing a hireable Community Waste Kit for our local schools and groups to access.

♻ https://gameonrubbishgone.nz

07/10/2026

Keeping Resthills Park Safe & Accessible! 🌳🐾🚲

You might notice some fresh additions at the park entrances by Hamilton City Council! New chicanes and bollards have been installed to keep cars clear of the driveway, and unauthorised motorbikes off the reserve while making sure Resthills Park stays safe, open, and welcoming for everyone else.

Whether you’re visiting on 2 legs, 4 legs, riding a pushbike, or pushing a pram or wheelchair, entrances are designed to keep you moving smoothly.

📱 See maintenance issues or general park concerns? Report them quickly to Council via the Antenno app.

🚨 See motorbikes or illegal activity in the park? Report non-emergencies directly to NZ Police by calling 105 (or report online at 105.police.govt.nz). If in any immediate danger, always call 111.

Thank you for helping protect the park space! 💚

30/09/2026

With the 2026 🥎 Waikato Softball Association season about to start, we're asking everyone to Step Up to the Plate and Park Responsibly!

To keep our streets safe and fair, please cover all bases and stick to the Hamilton City Council Park Smarter rules this season:

🚨Driveway Access & New Bollards: We expect new bollards to be installed at the bottom of the driveway soon to keep the driveway completely clear. Blocking driveways or park entrances prevents emergency vehicles from getting through—keep this area clear at all times.

🏃🏽Drop and Run: Use the turnaround bay to make a shortstop and drop off any people or equipment, before parking elsewhere.

❎Park Only in Marked Bays: Stick to designated parking spots. Avoid broken yellow lines, berms, traffic islands, and no-stopping zones.

♿Respect Mobility Parks: Save these exclusively for valid permit holders.

6️⃣Neighbourhood Pitch: No fouls! Keep footpaths, driveways, and cycleways clear. Maintain at least 6 meters from intersections and leave room for vehicles to turn in cul-de-sacs.

🚸Watch for Young Fans (Playground Safety): Please drive slowly and with extra care through the park and playground area. Keep a close eye out for children moving between the playground, cars, and fields!

📍 Cover the Infield and the Outfield (Alternative Entrances)
With driveway access restricted and main parking limited, avoid the main entrance bottleneck by parking a street over and enjoying a quick warm-up walk to first base:

John Webb Drive (2 min walk)
Reynolds Drive (5 min walk)
MacMurdo Avenue (7 min walk)
Resthill Crescent x2 (8 min walk)
Sunnyhills Avenue (8 min walk)

Plan to arrive early, or consider carpooling, using the nearby Comet Bus service , or biking to Resthills Park. Thanks for working together to keep everyone safe!

🦺 Look Out for the Kaitiaki Crew!
Keep an eye out for our Kaitiaki Crew in hi-vis vests who will be on-site helping to direct traffic and guide you to suitable parking spots on busy days. If you're ever unsure where to go, just ask them—they're here to help keep everything running smoothly!

Reporting Issues
Report parking concerns or access issues directly to Hamilton City Council (include photos where possible):

App: Antenno App (App Store / Google Play)
Website: hamilton.govt.nz/report-it
Phone: 07 838 6699
Email: [email protected]

24/09/2026

It’s Clean Up NZ Week, and we’re on a mission to keep our local spaces looking their best!

We’re super grateful to the Tagbusters for tackling local tagging so quickly and keeping our parks bright and clean. 🎨✨, and we're enjoying seeing the underplanting done at our Nature in the City Planting Day in July take hold!

To top it all off, we’re putting the finishing touches on a brand-new Match Day Waste Management initiative - Game on! Rubbish Gone! —stay tuned for details.

The reality is that if rubbish isn't picked up and disposed of correctly, it can stay in our environment for hundreds of years. Every item collected makes a huge difference for our parks, waterways, wildlife, and community.

Thank you all for your mahi in keeping Aotearoa beautiful! 🇳🇿💚

Graffiti removal - Tagbusters 0800 824 287 8377 (TAGBUSTERS)

03/09/2026

💥🏗️ Friday Flashback #7 — Council, Compromise, and Concrete

Last week we told you about the greyhound track that never quite raced. This week: how Council balanced a growing sports code against a growing suburb — and the buildings that came out of it.

⚖️ The 1977 "Split-Personality" Compromise
By the late 1970s, houses had sprung up right to the edges of Resthills Park, and Council faced a real dilemma: how do you run high-impact sport next door to family homes? In September 1977, the Hamilton City Council Recreation Committee landed on a compromise planners nicknamed the "split-personality" layout — dividing the park into two zones. One half stayed a quiet, open space for passive local recreation - now the dog park. The other became an enclosed "charge ground" for sport, primarily Waikato Rugby League, deliberately positioned away from the neighbouring homes.

🅿️ The MacMurdo Avenue Promise (1979)
That compromise was tested just two years later. On 26 September 1979, Council passed a resolution promising residents that the MacMurdo Avenue entrance to the park would stay strictly passive and quiet — no carparks, no high-impact amenities at that end, without full consultation with the neighbours first. It's a lovely example of a Council genuinely trying to keep both sides of a fast-growing suburb happy.

🏗️ Blueprints of the 1980 Amenities Block
With the 1977 zoning in place, Council turned to building something permanent. The official blueprints for the Resthills amenities block were finalised in January 1980, and they were seriously thorough for their time:

🔹 8 separate player changing rooms, enough for multiple visiting teams at once
🔹 A First Aid Room with its own dedicated hot water heater
🔹 A Boiler Room running three commercial-grade gas water heaters just for the showers
🔹 A dedicated Towel Room, tucked right next to the boiler to keep team uniforms and towels warm and dry

🚇 Tunnel 34 — The Grand Entrance
The standout feature of the whole plan, though, was Tunnel 34 — a precast concrete player tunnel cut straight through the heart of the eastern spectator embankment. And here's the fun twist: that embankment was the very same one built for the greyhound stadium we told you about last week! Players would walk beneath the crowd and emerge right onto the field for a proper, tiered grand entrance on match day — repurposing 1970s greyhound infrastructure for 1980s rugby league.

⚠️ As always — if you have knowledge, corrections, or memories to share about this era of Resthills Park, we'd love to hear them. This is a living record.

👇 Next week: the people and paperwork behind Resthills Sports Centre itself.

27/08/2026

💥🐕 Friday Flashback #6 — Racetracks, Floods, and the Neighbourhood's Living Room

Last week we covered the streets and the developers behind them. This week: the 1970s, when Resthills and Glenview got reshaped, tested by water, and held together by one very well-loved pub.

🏁 The Racetrack That Never Was
Here's a fact that changes how you'll look at Resthills Park forever: those sweeping grassy embankments around the main field? They weren't built for league, or softball. In the mid-1970s, Council commissioned local contractor L.P. Scherer to build a greyhound racing stadium on the site — and those hills were specifically sculpted to flank an oval racetrack. The greyhounds never actually raced there — plans shifted, and the sport moved to Claudelands Raceway from 1982 to 1989 instead. But in a lovely twist of fate, Resthills Park is now one of Hamilton's off-leash dog parks. The dogs got there in the end. 🐾

🛒 Abel's Big 'A' Plaza in Glenview, Hamilton, opened in 1969 and is historically significant as New Zealand's first shopping mall. Erwin Leonard Guy Abel, a pioneering Hamilton grocer, opened the plaza to combine low prices with high standards of service. The Original Complex featured an anchor Abel's supermarket alongside specialty spots like a juvenile boutique and an electrical appliance shop

🌊 The 1976 Flood — and a Goat
On 7 July 1976, Glenview experienced one of its worst floods, making the front page of the NZ Herald the next morning. Sunnyhills Avenue was completely submerged — residents remember rowing dinghies down their own street. And the cause, according to local oral tradition? A goat shelter — goat still attached — reportedly washed into a culvert and blocked it during heavy rain. It's the kind of detail that sounds too good to be true, but it fits: this was land that had been drained from swamp a century earlier, and the same Ohaupo Road drain kept causing problems for decades after. A reminder that the ground under Glenview has a very long memory.

🍻 The Glenview Hotel — The Neighbourhood's Living Room
Through it all, one place held the community together: the Glenview Hotel on Resthill Crescent. If you grew up in Glenview in the 70s or 80s, chances are you have a memory here — the Sunday smorgasbord that families lived on all day to get their money's worth, the Jet Set Bar packed three nights a week, and manager Harry Thorstonson and his wife Doreen running the place like it was everyone's living room. Longtime locals still talk about the bands — Aspect held the residency through the late 70s and early 80s, with Dealer, Stonehenge, and Thyme all having their moment on stage too.

And here's a genuinely wild fact: during the 1987 Rugby World Cup, the Fiji national rugby team was billeted at the Glenview Hotel for their Hamilton matches — including the first ever international rugby test played in our city (Fiji beat Argentina 28–9 in front of 13,000 fans). Coach driver Brett Newling remembers the kitchen putting on a huge crab spread for the team, and they loved it.

The hotel's door policy was famously relaxed about age too — more than a few Glenview locals started their drinking careers there well before they were legally allowed to, and they tell the stories fondly to this day.

⚠️ As always — if you have knowledge, corrections, or sources that enrich this history, please share them. This is a living record. Anyone remember exactly when the Glenview Hotel opened or closed? We haven't been able to pin that down yet!

👇 Next week: blueprints, boiler rooms, and a precast concrete player tunnel — the 1980 amenities block that's still standing today.

24/08/2026

🥎 Ready to step up to the plate?

Waikato Softball Association is holding a Scorers Clinic next weekend, and whether you're brand new to the scorebook or looking to sharpen your skills, this session is for you!

Tag a teammate or volunteer who needs to be there!

Scorers clinic is being held next weekend
⏩️ Session will be run by Emily and Wanita

✔️ Learn basic scoring
✔️ Scorers resources and templates available
✔️ Understand the importance of accurate recording
✔️ Discussing interpretation and integrity

DM or email [email protected] to indicate your attendance

15/08/2026

Great to host Kimura Kiwis Inc. at Resthills today for the Waikato Sambo Open, alongside Hamilton Sambo 🥋

We were happy to help them out with floor space at short notice for their competition. It was awesome seeing their portable mats in action and watching such a well-supported event. Thanks to everyone who travelled and came out! 🙌

13/08/2026

💥🏘️ Friday Flashback #5 — The Fields Become Streets

Last time we covered the farming families and the Rukuhia scrapyard. This week: the moment Glenview and southern Melville stopped being paddocks and became the suburb we know today — plus a genuine historical mystery we're still trying to solve.

The Suburban Frontier
By the late 1950s, Hamilton's postwar population boom had finally reached the southern paddocks — the city grew from 22,000 people in 1945 to over 63,000 by 1966, and the old militia-era farmland simply couldn't hold out. Council had the foresight to secure the Reynolds farmland as public reserve ahead of the advancing suburb — the deliberate act that gave us Resthills Park.

🛩 The 1966 aerial captures the transformation of the area mid-stride.

Council at the time actually refused to accept the area's gullies as reserve land, insisting on flat ground instead — part of why the gullies you see today were built up rather than preserved as-is. In one case, 4,000 cubic yards of fill sourced from Chinaman's Hill (see previous post) was used behind Tomin Road and Greta Street. Before development, those gullies were a tangle of blackberry, honeysuckle, and wattle.

🕵️ An Open Mystery: When Was Resthills Park Actually Acquired?
Here's one we genuinely can't answer yet, and we'd love your help. While we know Council secured land through the 1960s and into the early 1970s, the actual acquisition date for the bulk of the Reynolds farmland is still a mystery. If anyone has old Council records, family knowledge, or memories of the original purchase, we would love to hear from you!

The Developers Behind the Street Names
A small group of developers shaped the entire suburb, and their names — and their families' — are still on our street signs:

🔹 Bruce Lugton — the most prominent of them all. His company, Resthills Ltd, gave us Resthill Crescent (1968) and, indirectly, the name of the park itself. Bruce Avenue is named for him.

🔹 M.T. MacDonald ran with a Scottish theme: Macmurdo Avenue, Colstone Street, Forth Crescent, Oban Avenue — and MacDonald Road for himself.

🔹 McLachlan of Chartwell Properties named Sunnyhills Avenue after Auckland relatives, Dawn Rise after his wife, and Lorraine Place after his daughter.

🔹 L.B. Splitt named an entire run of streets after his daughters — Greta, Gwendoline, Jeanette, Keitha, and Sacha — plus Splitt Avenue for himself.

🔹 The Tomin family left the most detailed record of all: Tomin Road for the family, Urlich Avenue for relative Clem Urlich, and Richan Street — a blend of sons Richard and Andrew's nicknames, "Rich" and "An."

🔹 One lovely outlier: Pollen Crescent, named by A.J. Fisk — a beekeeper (hence "Pollen") who also happened to be a former president of the Hamilton Historical Society.

🕵️ The Name "Resthills" — A Second Mystery
The naming archive confirms Resthill Crescent came from Lugton's company, Resthills Ltd — but it also notes, almost in passing, that a "Reston family" lived in the area too. Coincidence, or did the company borrow a name already on the land? If anyone knows more, we'd love to hear it!

🎖️ The Military Streets of Melville
Melville's street grid honours WWII and WWI commanders over more than a decade: Dowding Street for the Battle of Britain's Air Chief Marshal Hugh Dowding, Beatty Street for WWI naval commander Admiral David Beatty, Odette Street for decorated SOE agent Odette Hallowes, Bader Street for legless flying ace Douglas Bader, Slim Street for "Forgotten Army" commander William Slim, Wingate Street for Chindits founder Orde Wingate, Allenby Street for WWI's Edmund Allenby, and Montgomery Crescent for El Alamein's Bernard Montgomery. Normandy Avenue is the oldest of the lot — renamed from Western Lea Road in 1949 to honour D-Day.

And as housing filled the remaining gaps, developers added an aviation-themed trio — Kittyhawk Place, Corsair Place, and Catalina Drive — a fitting echo of the very aircraft that passed through the Rukuhia scrapyard. ✈️

⚠️ As always — if you have knowledge, corrections, or sources that enrich this history, please share them.

👇 Next week: greyhounds, a council compromise, and the Glenview Hotel's Sunday smorgasbord.

30/07/2026

💥🚜 Friday Flashback #4 — Made Ground, Market Gardens, and Fighter Planes

Last week we covered the raupatu and the militia soldiers who walked off their swampy land grants. This week: what happened to that land once the speculators moved in — farming, market gardens, a flood story, and a backyard scrapyard full of WWII fighters!

Made Ground
By the late 1800s and early 1900s, a handful of farming families worked the low-lying Rukuhia flats south of Hamilton — but the land itself wasn't natural. It had been radically re-engineered by James Williamson's drainage network: hand-dug V-shaped channels cut through the Rukuhia peat bog by workers using ditching spades and axes, laying timber planks just to stop themselves sinking into the mire. What these families farmed was, in every sense, made ground — and it's still sinking today. Waikato Regional Council has monitored continuous peat subsidence, due to Williamson's 'improvements' since 1924.

Hospital Hill
Before Glenview or Melville had names of their own, the district's identity came from a single landmark: Waikato Hospital, opened in 1887 on the ridge to the north. Locals called the wider area Hospital Hill. Melville takes its name from James Dougal Melville, who arrived in NZ in 1862 aged 13, served aboard the government steamer Sturt during the Waikato Campaign, and settled near Hamilton until his death in 1909. Melville's very first street, though, predates all of this — Mahoe Street was laid out in the 1920s on a crown grant, named simply after a prominent native tree.

The Farming Families
A run of settler families carved up the land after Williamson's Rukuhia Estate broke up — and left their names permanently on our street signs. The Peacocke family farmed the southern river flats (Peacockes Road); Edward and Laura Houchen ran the Tirohanga homestead from the 1920s (Houchens Road); the Tomin family and their relative Clem Urlich subdivided their own land in the mid-1950s, creating Tomin Road and Urlich Avenue, and the Collins family established a prominent early farm and their name is preserved today in Collins Road, which serves as a major dividing line running right through the heart of the Mangakootukutuku catchment. And the acreage that is now Resthills Park itself was carved directly from Reynolds family farmland — permanently marked by Reynolds Drive.

✈️ Rukuhia's Secret: A Fighter Plane Graveyard
After WWII, the RNZAF rapidly downsized — leaving hundreds of combat-ready aircraft suddenly surplus. Between 1945 and the early 1950s, the area that is now Hamilton Airport became a graveyard for over 400 combat aircraft — mostly F4U Corsairs, alongside P-40 Kittyhawks, TBF Avengers and Ventura bombers, sold off for next to nothing by the War Assets Realization Board. Larsen and Co. won the tender to smelt the aluminium airframes onsite into ingots. But plenty were simply bought by locals: drop tanks became tiny "tank boats" and soapbox racers, while fuselages and wings turned into farm sheds, chicken coops, and playground equipment. This history resurfaces later in the street grid too — keep an eye out for Kittyhawk Place, Corsair Place, and Catalina Drive in a future post!

🥬 The Sun Market Gardens
Hamilton's Chinese market gardening community recognised the value of the fertile, along the Mangakootukutuku gully — the Sun Market Gardens supplied fresh vegetables to the growing borough from plots along SH3. One notable figure here is Sam Poy Shum, who established a market garden in southern Glenview; the surrounding hillside being named in period language as "Chinaman's Hill,". His son Alex later recalled the black straw hats and hoes turning the soil — "back-breaking work." Alex's own journey to Hamilton was remarkable: at age 10, he and his mother and sister faced the Japanese invasion of China as war refugees before joining his father here. The family's shop in Glenview is still fondly remembered by older Hamiltonians, and the market garden history lives on nearby in the naming of Soo Yong Place.

🐦 The Pukeko Paddocks — and a Flood Bigger Than the Saxby Road Bridge
Before subdivision, the soggy flats near what's now Resthills Park were known locally as the Pukeko Paddocks — better suited to swamp hens than stock. Flooding hit repeatedly through the 1950s (1953, 1956, 1958), at one point completely washing away the original wooden bridge on Saxbys Road. The culprit wasn't just local rain — it was high water in the main Waipā and Waikato Rivers backing straight up into the Rukuhia network. It took a full regional engineering response to fix: the Lower Waikato–Waipā Flood Protection Scheme, built from 1961 to 1983, which brought dams, floodgates, and pump stations to tame a river system that had been overwhelming local drains for nearly a century.

🛩 The 1961 aerials capture this land in its final farming years — open paddocks, mature hedgerows, a single modest farm building, and the grid of Williamson-era ditches still doing their job a century after being hand-dug. This is Resthills landscape before a single house went up.

⚠️ As always — if you have knowledge, corrections, or sources that enrich this history, please share them. This is a living record.

👇 Next week: the fields become streets — the developers, families, and Scottish clan names behind the modern Glenview/Melville grid.