More than 20,000 spectators… The professional rugby has celebrated its grand return in a stadium with the presence of an audience many of Dunedin, in the far south of New Zealand, to attend Saturday to the success of the local franchise the Otago Highlanders on the Waikato Chiefs.

While many competitions are held behind closed doors, this meeting is the first major sporting event in the world to have occurred with a public allowed to come without restriction fill the stands of a stadium since the beginning of the epidemic of coronavirus in mid-march.