Friday 15 May is the day the future of Moana Pasifika is meant to be settled, with the Kanaloa Consortium running down the clock on its proposal to New Zealand Rugby to take over the franchise licence and keep Super Rugby Pacific’s only Pasifika side alive past this season.
The deadline was set by NZR after weeks of public pressure and behind-the-scenes talanoa, and the bid is sitting on a $15 million package that Kanaloa says includes debt settlements and the working capital the team needs to survive into 2027. The consortium is led by former All Blacks Jerome Kaino, Joe Rokocoko, John Afoa, Anthony Tuitavake, Ben Atiga, Sam Tuitupou and Benson Stanley, with former Samoan international Tracy Atiga as chief executive.
The trigger for the crisis came on 15 April, when the Pasifika Medical Association, which has held the licence and underwritten the team since it entered Super Rugby Pacific in 2022, told the players and staff it could no longer carry the financial load. PMA chief executive Debbie Sorensen has been clear in public comments that the association is a health body first, with obligations to its members and patients across the Pacific, and that running a professional rugby club through repeated losses was no longer compatible with that mission.
That decision left a franchise founded in 2021 by Sir Michael Jones and Sir Bryan Williams staring at the prospect of folding once the final whistle blew on the 2026 campaign. With two matches left, a home game against the Highlanders at North Harbour Stadium on 23 May and a trip to Canberra to face the Brumbies on 30 May, the players have been living week to week, weighing offers from rival clubs while head coach Fa’alogo Tana Umaga keeps the squad focused on a finals push.
Kanaloa has spent the past month trying to convince all three of the parties whose signatures it needs. NZR has said publicly it is open to any proposal that presents a long-term and sustainable plan for Moana Pasifika. The New Zealand Rugby Players Association, run by Rob Nichol, has demanded a formal written proposal before it lends its name, and the Pacific Rugby Players Association has set its own conditions around player welfare and financial guarantees. PMA, the current licence holder, is the gatekeeper Kanaloa has found hardest to move.
Tracy Atiga told RNZ Pacific earlier this month that the consortium’s offer had been stalled inside PMA without reaching its board of directors. “Our offer never got past Debbie,” she said, calling on the licence holders to let the proposal be considered on its merits. She also claimed Kanaloa had been unable to inspect Moana Pasifika’s books, telling reporters, “No one’s going to come along and buy a franchise if they don’t have an opportunity to go through the books.”
That frustration led Atiga to float the idea of going around PMA entirely. “If the licence is gone, it goes back to New Zealand Rugby, so, let’s just have a direct conversation with New Zealand Rugby,” she told RNZ Sport. The thinking is straightforward enough. If PMA hands the licence back rather than transfer it, NZR holds the asset and can re-issue it to whoever has both the money and the structure to keep the team running. Kanaloa is positioning itself as the only group ready to take that call.
The financial threshold is steep. Super Rugby Pacific clubs need north of $15 million a year to operate at the standard required by the competition, and all five New Zealand franchises posted losses in 2025. PMA is reportedly selling Maoate House in Christchurch as part of unwinding its rugby commitments, and any new owner must satisfy NZR that they can post assets or property as security if the franchise folds, so that creditors and players are not left exposed. Kanaloa says it has that backing in place, though it has not yet detailed publicly which financiers and Pasifika investors are sitting behind the headline figure.
For the players, the politics is largely white noise. Halfback Augustine Pulu, capped by the All Blacks in 2014 and a senior voice in the current Moana Pasifika dressing room, summed up the mood when he told reporters, “We have got to provide for our families. God willing, that there is another opportunity to carry on.” Several Moana Pasifika players have been given permission to talk to other clubs while their own future hangs on the next few days.
The wider context matters too. Moana Pasifika was created in part to give Pacific players a Super Rugby home, to keep more of that talent in the New Zealand system rather than watching it scatter through France and Japan, and to give young Tongan, Samoan and Cook Islands men a pathway visible from their own communities. Losing the team would not just remove a side from the competition table, it would shut down that pathway during a World Cup cycle in which Pacific nations are climbing fast.
NZR will not announce a decision today even if Kanaloa lodges its papers on time. The board will need to weigh the proposal, consult Rugby Australia and World Rugby on competition implications, and decide whether to transfer the licence directly, run a contestable process, or stand the team down for 2027 and revisit later. What today does is shift the question from whether Kanaloa has a real offer to whether the people holding the licence are willing to let it be tested.
If you have a view on whether Super Rugby Pacific can afford to lose its only Pasifika side, or on whether NZR should step in and force the issue, leave a comment below. We read every one.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
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