At Cape Town Stadium
Sometimes you need a visitor to ask the question that you wanted to ask, but just thought was inappropriate.
It came from former Wallaby backline star Pat Howard during the press conference held ahead of the start of the Cape Town Tens, which will be concluded today at Hamiltons. Asked about the plush new Cape Town Stadium, Howard said it was a magnificent venue. Then he followed up with the interesting bit.
"I never saw much wrong with Newlands, to be honest. I think that is a magnificent stadium too. I would just love to know what they are going to do with all these left-over stadiums once the World Cup is over?"
Great question, but if anyone doubted why it was necessary to build these new stadiums, they just needed to be at Cape Town Stadium for Saturday's festival occasion headlined by the Super 14 warm-up match between the Stormers and a Boland XV.
Yes, Howard is right, there isn't too much wrong with Newlands. That is if you ignore the lift that perennially seems to be out of order in the railway stand, a press box which is cramped, inappropriately placed almost on a South African Airways flight path, and the fact that it was too small to host a Test match during last year's British and Irish Lions tour.
You can also see why a move from Newlands to Green Point might be weighed down by small matters which might seem unimportant, but are crucial to rugby people. For a start, I can't see where they would accommodate the over 300 hospitality suites you find at Newlands and which make up a sizeable part of the Western Province union's bread and butter.
They could fill in the concourse level with suites, like they did at the old King's Park, but then that would rob the new stadium of one of the attributes that make it so appealing - which is accessibility and ease of movement for spectators.
One thing that for me is beyond dispute, however, is that Cape Town Stadium is an infinitely better and more modern venue than the creaky old home of rugby in the Western Cape on Boundary Road.
It has so many things Newlands lacks, and I am not just referring to the modern press box and media centre, something that puts Newlands to shame.
Most importantly though, and this is being written before the kick-off of the main event, it does have what we thought it might lack, which is atmosphere. Down in Durban they may have an argument when they say they need to retain the unique vibe created by the proximity of the spectators to the playing arena, for I have not visited the new stadium in that city.
But the Cape Town Stadium works for rugby, at least as much as most of the other big rugby arenas in the world, and it is superior to the Stade de France, venue for the last Rugby World Cup final. My money says that the conversion of this into a rugby venue is going to happen at some stage.
Perhaps it might be later rather than sooner, and I have too many bad habits to realistically expect to break a longevity record by living long enough to see this prediction proved correct, but it would be surprising if in the next 100 years there are not more Test matches played here than at Newlands.
In that sense, the match between the International Legend Tens team and their SA Legend counterparts was a groundbreaker, and for the record, it was former Sharks flyhalf and Hamiltons captain Clinton van Rensburg who entered the record books for being the first try-scorer at the venue.
Maybe this venue is too big for WP games against smaller teams, but for the international matches and the plum fixtures such as that against the Bulls, the union should already be making plans to do what the Waratahs do for bigger games, where they utilise the Olympic Stadium instead of their usual home ground.
It would just make no sense for the Green Point venue to be cast off as a white elephant after July - the stadium is just too impressive.