Mike's Minute: Lessons that should be learned from Moana Pasifika

Author: Mike Hosking,
Publish Date: Sat, 27 Jun 2026, 1:49pm

Moana Pasifika players form a huddle after the round seven Super Rugby match between Moana Pasifika and Highlanders at North Harbour Stadium, on March 27, 2026, in Auckland, New Zealand. (Photo by Hagen Hopkins/Getty Images)

The end is not the story. The lesson should be.

Moana Pasifika is done.

The rescue bid is rejected, the side is no more. There is no Moana Pasifika in next year's Super Rugby.

It's a sad end for a team but surely, hopefully, a very big lesson for those who tried to convince us this was any way to do sport.

Ardie Savea, who so loved the team, was not a product of the team and in that is also one of the lessons. Pacific kids who love Ardie didn’t need a Government sponsored pile of ideological largesse in which to see Ardie prosper. He was already the real deal by the time he signed.

So the argument that Pacific kids need a Pacific team is nonsense, unless you can, through a competitive mechanism, make the business model work.

And the business model was never going to work so they conjured up a gerrymandered one. A false one.

I mean, charities and medical associations masquerading as rugby professionals? What a joke.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs as an investor in sport? What the hell?

A country that can't turn a surplus funding, for geopolitical reasons, a professional sports team? What the hell?

The NRL are making the same mistake with PNG. It will end in tears and they are a lot further down the success track than our rugby union is.

Super Rugby was already stretching the credibility band given South Africa isn't a part anymore, Argentina never worked out, nor did the Japanese and the Australians tend to be present but a bit useless.

So we are left with Fiji and a made-up subsidised team from the Pacific who, as it turned out, also couldn’t play that well, lost a lot and went bust with our money.

There remain questions as to where that money went, how much of it was appropriately used and whether any of it is repaid.

Remember, this is our national game. Is it any way to run a national game?

As far as noise, hype and patriotic fervour goes they did that well. There seemed real pride in the exercise.

But hype never paid the bills and that is the lesson I hope is learned.

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