A venue near Eden Park is now an outpost of the Warriors’ burgeoning empire. Duncan Greive went along to its first public night.

There is something about the mental image of a sports bar which resists being elevated. Part of the attraction is the grubbiness – swappa bottles, pokies, smoke drifting in from an outdoor area which looks suspiciously indoors. It’s that rare location where you worry about being overdressed – maybe these jeans are too tidy? 

Still, time continues to march on, and the golden rule of contemporary society remains that if something can be made bougie, it will be (people like me are essentially entirely responsible for this phenomenon, as well as the main ones complaining about it). SkyCity launched Andy’s nearly 10 years ago, with diner-style food, good beer and comfortable seats. More recently, Schapiro’s saved a seemingly cursed site near Galbraiths at the top of Symonds Street, with diner-style food, better beer and a mixture of comfortable seats and less comfortable stools.

Now the owners of Warriors have topped them all with Full Time, taking on a large site in Kingsland overlooking Eden Park, which was once a popular Mac’s Brew Bar that lost the vibe. I went along on the pub’s first night open to the public, to see how the latest generation of elevated sports bar played out.

On first exposure, the place is really intense. According to the Herald’s social scene reporter Ricardo Simich there are 32 metres of screens in the place, and if anything that seems short a few. The sensory overload is completed by some loud mid-tempo EDM – but a staff member seemed to clock that it was a bit much and told us they’d turn it down – a level of confident autonomy you don’t always see in big premises.

We took a table in the outdoor area, as the interior was rammed, mainly with young lads. With my back to the road, I counted 11 screens in my eyeline, pounding a mixture of NRL, NPC and horse racing. The latter sits in one of two dedicated TAB sections which take half the outdoor area and a slightly forlorn annex. There is sports memorabilia, but not at the deep fandom level found at Schapiro’s – a few jerseys and balls, and as often union as league – the ownership group are clearly trying to appeal to all sports fans, rather than just Warriors fans.

Full Time may well be one of the most opulent new bar fitouts to drop in a while. Ever since Kieran McAnulty handed the keys to the TAB to Britain’s gambling behemoth Entain last year, the once extremely dusty gambling operator has been spending vast sums of money anywhere remotely connected to sport. That gusher of spending might be the only thing keeping some media operations afloat in this cursed year – even RNZ has been getting in on the action (albeit inadvertently). On this night the brand seemed to have not quite shed its vaguely radioactive quality, as both TAB sections were near-deserted compared to the main areas of the bar.

We were greeted with immense enthusiasm on arrival. The service culture of this place is incredible – it’s almost jarring hearing New Zealanders speak this loud and clear while looking you dead in the eye. That’s not how we talk or act in any other field of human endeavour. Everything we ordered came lightning quick, despite it being near capacity and opening night. I genuinely don’t know how they’ve managed to find a group of people so uniformly antithetical to our general shy national disposition. It’s amazing.

Downsides: the table was comically wobbly. You would need a whole packet of napkins to stabilise it. Again, forgivable on opening night. We ordered a round of tap margaritas to start – these were tarter and fresher than is typical with an on-tap cocktail. The drinks list is long, and Lion-aligned, though there was Puhoi and Epic on tap too, so they’re not completely married to the big brewery. 

The menu is where the venue shows its aspiration. Core mains range from $38 to $45, but there’s a $150 steak if you’ve had a big win on the dogs or something. I ordered a toasted sandwich, which is a nice sports bar touch, albeit at a somewhat comical $30 price point. It was good, but a bit Coffee Club-goes-fancy – sourdough just doesn’t seem like the right bread for a toastie. The loaded fries were good though, and for $23 delivered a pleasingly gigantic portion.

Maybe the best thing about this bar is that it exists at all. While Wellington’s travails are rightly getting a lot of coverage, sometimes it feels like Auckland isn’t getting its share of complaining in. This inner city has felt like a construction site for a decade now, with one enormous job just stuck half-finished, and our beloved local mall at St Lukes feels semi-abandoned. Every day seems to bring news of another once indomitable corporate in a deep funk. The city feels glum, basically.

We’re in desperate need of a reason to believe this fever will break. Full Time is another category expansion from the owners of the beautiful acoustics materials company Autex, another big leap on from their wildly successful (off-field, at least) takeover of the Warriors. Like Bill Foley’s Auckland FC, it’s a new, ambitious thing in a city which really needs some investment and self-belief. It’s loud, bright and pricey – and won’t be to everyone’s tastes. But as a place to watch sport and drink beer, it’s full of energy, undeniably the new state of the art.