OpinionLeft Field: Let's perfect our pitch for the new Kai Tak stadium

It's not good to gloat. That's what my mum used to tell me, but it was still hard to prevent a smirk when New Zealand Maori last week cancelled a match against the Asia-Pacific Dragons in Singapore next month due to the poor surface at the new national stadium.

We in Hong Kong can relate closely to this. The pitch at Hong Kong Stadium has had its share of bad reviews, especially with the English media - experts in the dramatic - labelling it a "killer pitch" when Manchester United visited in the summer of last year. With all that bad publicity over the Hong Kong pitch, it is hard to believe the Singaporean authorities got it so wrong when they built their showpiece sports hub, which opened in April.

The soul of a stadium is the pitch. We cannot but have a laugh at the fix our rival city finds itself in. When Brazil played Japan in an exhibition match nearly two weeks ago, one wit said it was like watching beach soccer at the Copacabana.

Now problems have come to a head, resulting in rugby's famous Maori All Blacks pulling out of their match against a select team formerly known as the Asian Barbarians.

It seems the problem is so bad that the Singapore Sports Hub is set to close the stadium for the next four months to wipe the egg off its face as well as undertake a major reconstruction of the surface. Officials need to do it urgently as our sources say Singapore will host a leg of the IRB Sevens World Series next season.

The International Rugby Board will in the next fortnight announce its new schedule for the series and it is understood Singapore will replace Japan as a leg on the circuit in 2016. Their tournament will follow the Hong Kong Sevens.

But with the pitch in such a bad state, the Singapore authorities have had no option but to cancel all events so they can re-lay a sturdier surface.

Hong Kong must take a lesson from this - that is if we haven't learned our lessons already with the So Kon Po pitch.