“I’ve had a quick exchange of texts with Tana [coach Umaga] after you contacted me about coming on your show and I asked him how many were at risk, and all up, staff and players, 60 of them face a very uncertain future over the next few hours. I think official confirmation is due soon, it’s fair to say as far as Moana Pasifika is concerned, it looks like their future in Super Rugby is done,” Laban said.
“The rules of engagement when they first came into the competition were unfair. They weren’t allowed to have access to the top players in the competition so it wasn’t a level playing field. The allocation of broadcasting rights, what the New Zealand franchises got by comparison to what Moana Pasifika got is also an unfair distribution of the revenue generated by the broadcast rights. They’ve had a lot of barriers to overcome and now they’re facing the reality of Pasifika Medical Association not being able to support them beyond this year. If they were to remain in the competition they would need the support of New Zealand Rugby, Super Rugby and World Rugby. And I can’t believe that between the three of them they’re not able to come up with a deal that would secure them.”
Laban suggested the money was there in corporate New Zealand to save Moana Pasifika.
“NZR and World Rugby have the marketing connections to help Moana Pasifika. I can understand New Zealand Rugby have financial pressures of their own and their own franchises to support. But I would have thought $12m, surely you can share that among five to six corporates in New Zealand. Somebody like Sir John Key could make half a dozen phone calls and I’m sure he can change the financial equation for Moana Pasifika in five minutes,” Laban said.
The Herald revealed last year that PMA suffered a financial blow when it lost a government contract worth $44m.
Moana Pasifika currently sit bottom of the Super Rugby Pacific table with one win from eight games. They are already losing coach Tana Umaga at the end of the season, after he was named as an assistant to new All Blacks coach Dave Rennie.
The club’s departure would leave Super Rugby with a 10-team competition and another restructure after the Melbourne Rebels left after the 2024 season. The current season is 14 regular season matches each, with two byes, followed by a quarter-final format.
Moana Pasifika joined Super Rugby in 2022 and finished last in the first two seasons with just three wins from 28 games.
The club’s best season was last year, led by All Blacks star Ardie Savea, who joined the franchise from the Hurricanes. They finished in seventh place, five points outside of the playoffs, including wins over the Hurricanes, Crusaders, Highlanders and Blues.
Moana Pasifika travel to Sydney to face the Waratahs on Friday. If a new owner can’t be found, then it is probable that Moana will play their last game against the Brumbies on May 30 in Canberra.
Moana was granted a licence to enter Super Rugby Pacific in 2022 and was set up with a mandate to identify and develop elite talent in Samoa and Tonga.
The initial presentations envisioned the side eventually being based in the Pacific Islands and playing most of its games in Samoa and Tonga.
The plan was to create a professional team that would provide a pipeline so talent could flow from Super Rugby through to the national teams of Samoa and Tonga.
But while the vision made sense and was widely supported by New Zealand’s five foundation Super Rugby sides, the financial costs and difficult logistics of setting up in the Pacific Islands proved insurmountable.
The club effectively morphed into a sixth New Zealand team, but without a permanent home and without the same financial structure as the other five.
As a result, it has struggled to consistently attract the quality of players it imagined or build the sort of fan base it needs to generate a sustainable level of commercial income.
