Moana Pasifika will leave Super Rugby Pacific at the end of the 2026 season, a decision that rugby leaders and commentators say is a major blow to Pasifika representation in the professional game. The franchise’s planned exit after a four-season run has drawn sharp condemnation from community figures, and reopened questions about funding, governance and how Pacific players are supported at the elite level.
“Whatever money they are paying the people who made this decision, it’s too much,” said rugby commentator and Pasifika leader Ken Laban, who is also the Mayor of Lower Hutt. Laban called the move “short-sighted” and “a terrible setback for the game,” saying five years was not enough time to judge the franchise’s potential. He urged administrators — naming Super Rugby, New Zealand Rugby and World Rugby as the likely decision-makers — to have done more to secure the club’s future.
Moana Pasifika’s origins were grassroots and symbolic: its unofficial journey began with an exhibition match against the Māori All Blacks six years ago, followed by the creation of the Moana Pasifika Charitable Trust a year later. The franchise formally entered Super Rugby Pacific in 2022, bringing together players from Samoa, Tonga, the Cook Islands, Niue and Tokelau and promising pathways for Pasifika talent and a team Pacific families could follow.
But persistent problems dogged the franchise. The team struggled with financial pressure, inconsistent results on the field, and what rugby writer Jamie Wall described as structural shortcomings that left the club “set up to fail.” Wall told Newsroom the franchise suffered from “funding issues and delayed contract negotiations,” which constrained its ability to recruit and retain talent, and that it had felt “homeless” after being based at Mount Smart Stadium — traditionally the home of the NRL Warriors — rather than a settled Pasifika heartland.
Even high-profile signings failed to reverse the slide. The inclusion of All Black Ardie Savea last season, intended as a marquee boost, was not enough to secure Moana Pasifika’s future, the bulletin noted. Wall said the club nonetheless created “really, really important and special rugby moments” and had influenced the trajectory of promising players, but that the decision to remove it from Super Rugby is “massively significant and not in a good way.”
The announcement is likely to have immediate implications for players, coaches and the development pathways Moana Pasifika had helped establish. While administrators have not publicly detailed the mechanics of the exit or what will happen to existing contracts and development programmes, community leaders warned the loss could diminish visible professional opportunities for Pasifika athletes and weaken cultural representation in top-tier southern hemisphere rugby.
Moana Pasifika’s brief history — from exhibition fixture to Super Rugby competitor in the space of six years — captured widespread hope for a team built explicitly around Pacific identity. Its imminent departure marks the latest and most consequential development in an ongoing debate over how professional rugby balances commercial sustainability with inclusive pathways for the regions that have long supplied the sport with talent.
Leave a comment