TVNZ chief correspondent and Hurricanes fan John Campbell visits Moana Pasifika's final home training session for 2023, and asks what can be done to help the Super Rugby side to compete.
Played 13, lost 13. What a grim toll.
In sport, all that matters, often, is the points table. Last place. Zero wins. A points differential of minus 265. What is there to say about Moana Pasifika that’s good?
On Thursday afternoon, I went out to Go Media (Mt Smart) Stadium to ask them.
It was Moana Pasifika’s last home training session of the season.
I drove out and arrived early. Unobserved, I stood by my car and watched. Out they came, the zero-wins boys and men, some of them veterans with immense experience, others new to Super Rugby.
I thought they’d be flat. I thought they’d go through the motions, as teams sometimes do when the possibilities have fled.
But they trained as if they were playing for something still achievable. They trained as if the title was still within their grasp. This earthbound team of defeated men trained as if they wanted to fly.
Why do Moana Pasifika deserve to survive?
After training, I went inside to talk to their departing head coach Aaron Mauger.
From 2000 to 2007, Mauger played 89 Super rugby games for the Crusaders. During that time, they won the title four times and were losing finalists twice. He has found himself at the other end of the table.
Gravity.
I asked him why a team with no wins from 13 games deserves to survive? Why does rugby need Moana Pasifika?
He paused, for a second or two, as if gathering himself for something important, and then his answer addressed the rugby world.
“I think we owe it to the Pacific Island community, and the Pacific Island nations, for everything they’ve given to the game," he said.
"They’ve gifted us some of the best players we’ve ever seen, and probably the greatest player of all time in Jonah Lomu, the person that’s made the greatest impact on the game, back in that ’95 World Cup.
"And it’s all been for the benefit of New Zealand, Australia, England, France. There’s Pacific Island boys playing everywhere now, Monty Ioane’s playing for Italy. All those teams have been made better by Pacific players.
"Moana Pasifika is a vehicle for Pacific Island players to play for a Pacific Island team, which has never been done before at this level. These players are here now, not far away.
"And that will strengthen Tonga and Samoa. It’s just critical. One day, you know, those two teams could be one and two in the world. it could take two or three World Cup cycles, maybe longer. But for that to happen we have to keep them here. And that’s what Moana Pasifika is doing."
Mauger speaks like he really needs me to understand this. And I do.
But we’re at the end of Super Rugby’s regular season. Six matches this weekend, then only the play-offs to come. And the same order remains. Like concrete.
At the end of the regular season in 2022, the top five teams were the Blues, Crusaders, Chiefs, Brumbies and Hurricanes.
A year later, ahead of the final weekend of regular-season matches - the top five teams are exactly the same quintet: Chiefs, Crusaders, Blues, Brumbies and Hurricanes.
Back in the dark ages, when fathers didn’t make school lunches, my mum staged a silent protest against the banality of her servitude by giving me the same sandwich every day. Her brilliance was that she’d anticipated Super Rugby.
Perhaps that’s not quite fair? With the playoffs ahead, we’re still in the arena of possibility. It may not be Marmite. It may be the Chiefs. It may be the Crusaders. It maaay be the Blues. It maaaaay be the Brumbies. It maaaaaaaaay be the Hurricanes. (Look, I know that probably wasn’t enough a’s, but hope springs eternal.) But it’s those five, isn’t it? Just like last season. Just like next season, probably.
And just as the five teams at the top of the table haven’t changed, nor have the five teams at the bottom.
As with 2022, the bottom five consists of Moana Pasifika, the Rebels, bless them, the Fijian Drua, the Force and the Highlanders. (Although that could change this weekend.)
What won’t change, even if they surprise the Waratahs in Sydney (and I really believe they can), is that Moana Pasifika will finish last. For the second year running.
I hate this.
I had high hopes for Moana Pasifika. Not that I thought they’d win, or even come really close to winning, but I believed, and still believe, in the idea of creating what World Rugby called “a player development pathway in the Pacific Islands”.
Something of an obsession
For years now, this has been something of an obsession for me, both as a journalist and as a rugby lover. I’ve written about it many times. This piece, from 2021, examines what had become a source of near fury for me.
If you go to it, you’ll also find a story I did (with my friend Adrian Stevanon) for TVNZ’s Sunday programme, about the near impossibility of Manu Samoa assembling and preparing a competitive team for the Rugby World Cup.
In that article, I wrote: “Everything about rugby’s professional model not only incentivises people who’ve moved to a tier one country to represent that country (rather than the country of their birth, childhood, and even, as if with Taniela Tupou, national age-grade honours), it also vacuums them out of tier two nations, particularly in the Pacific. Want to make a living playing rugby? Leave.”
Moana Pasifika was a response to that. Not perfect. But way better than the shameful absence that had preceded it.
And so, like many rugby fans, I viewed their arrival on the Super stage as a welcome step in the right direction.
But, like most sport, top tier rugby has a propensity for solipsism. And last week, an email was sent out headlined: “Moana Pasifika Farewells Levi Aumua.”
We all know now what that email was about. Aumua, a brilliant midfielder, is off to the Crusaders.
On Thursday afternoon, I met Aumua. What a fine young man. And of course he’s going to take an offer from the Crusaders. What player in his position wouldn’t?
But the fact that Moana Pasifika couldn’t retain him does appear strikingly at odds with the reasons for Moana Pasifika’s inclusion in Super Rugby.
A “game-changing decision”, World Rugby’s Chairman Bill Beaumont said, in 2021, about its addition to the competition.
“It is great for the players, allowing them to make the choice for the first time to be part of a local professional team at the top level of elite club rugby.”
Yes it is. But it needs to be a team that can retain its best players. Doesn’t it? Otherwise, it replicates the inequalities it was built to address.
La'auli Savae Sir Michael Jones, whose dignity and diplomacy are as rare as a Tara Iti (Fairy Tern), is quoted in the Moana Pasifika media release: “We are thrilled to have played a key part in his impressive development within professional rugby over the past two years. In that time, Levi has demonstrated his immense talent and huge contribution to Moana Pasifika, amassing 1292 game-time minutes for the club."
And then Sir Michael contrasts this with Aumua’s record with other teams.
“During his time with the Blues in 2019," Sir Michael points out, “Aumua played only 46 minutes as a substitute in 4 games, while with the Chiefs in 2018 he was named in the team once but did not take the field".
He’d never say, it, and I’ve spent happy hours in Sir Michael’s company and never heard him swear, but this is as close to FFS as we may ever get from him.
Let’s recap.
Moana Pasifika do exactly what they were created to do. They take a player who’d been somewhat overlooked in other Super teams, sign him up, engender in him a sense of belonging and self-belief, work with him to help him realise his potential at this elevated level, build a backline around him, delight in him as he becomes a genuine star, and then the Crusaders, a team who’ve won six times more Super Rugby titles than Moana Pasifika have won games, pop up and say, "over here, Levi, thank you very much".
This, I hear pragmatists saying, is the reality of professional sport. And, yes, it is.
But so is opportunity. And reciprocity. Which is to say a measure of professionalism might also be whether Moana Pasfika is able to snaffle a comparably valued Crusaders star for its backline.
Tonga-born Leicester Fainga'anuku, for example. And if there’s no chance of that happening, then it’s a version of professionalism that favours some professionals more than others.
This is the type of professionalism that has favoured the All Blacks over Samoa and Tonga. What player with dual eligibility wouldn’t opt for the All Blacks? Exponentially more pay. Way more games at way better stadiums. It’s a no-brainer.
This isn’t simple. Writing in Stuff, Robert Van Royen made the compelling point that this is Aumua’s career and he can do what he likes with it. (And, again, no-one blames Aumua for doing this. Again, who wouldn’t?)
Van Royen argues: “It’s not just that Aumua is probably fed up with losing every week, he wants to chase the All Blacks dream and has, unsurprisingly, decided the Crusaders are best suited to help him accomplish his goal".
Which is true.
But if we’ve built a team that does lose “every week”, surely the merit would lie in creating a team that can keep a genuine star, not in accepting it’s inevitable that rugby’s Milky Way will come along and snaffle him.
What's the point?
If Super Rugby’s solution to the problem of Pacific teams not being able to retain players replicates that situation, then what’s the point?
In 2014, Campbell Live, the TV show I fronted then, began our #ABsToSamoa campaign.
I’ve never kept mementos of my career (if you snuck into my home you’d find no hint of what I do for a living), but in the little box in which I keep the teeth the Tooth Fairy inexplicably left behind after visiting my children, I have a badge from that campaign.
#ABsToSamoa arose out of a kind of shame.
Manu Samoa began playing test rugby in 1925, and its near neighbour, us, home to the largest Pacific population in the world, hungry beneficiaries of Samoan brilliance, rugby’s most trenchant ambassadors, had never been there.
Here’s a fun activity. Go to this page, which contains a list of all international Test matches ever played by the All Blacks: It starts in 1903. 625 games in total.
Then go to the right hand column, which tells us where the games were played. Search for Suva - zero games. Search for Nadi – zero games. Search for Nuku'alofa - zero games. Search for Apia – one game, in 2015, and only then because we’d embarrassed them into it.
So, let’s add them up. Wait a sec, I’ll get a calculator. 0 + 0 + 0 + 1 equals, um, 1. One game. In total. In all of history. We’ve played in Bucharest and Chicago more often than we’ve played in Suva, Nadi and Nuku'alofa.
That’s pathetic, eh?
I know we’re not meant to have opinions when we write these things, so I’ll speak objectively and dispassionately. That’s pathetic.
“The unlevel playing field,” we called our story on the Sunday programme.
Given the near impossibility of Samoa and Tonga retaining players in a tug-of-war with New Zealand, Australia, England, France, etc, etc, etc, given how little power you have when you have almost no money to play players, and when the capacity to earn revenue is limited by a nearly complete absence of meaningful games at home, a chance to secure players, and to retain them nearby, is a blessing. If it works.
Which brings us back to what Mauger said. The reason why it’s so important that Moana Pasifika survive – and succeed.
Moana Pasifika's chief executive is Pelenato Sakalia.
I’d not met him before, but on Thursday afternoon I sat in his no-frills office to ask him how MP can do better.
He leaned forward. He leaned forward so much I took photos of him leaning forward. Like Mauger (and rugby bosses often don’t speak with this passion), he really wanted me to understand.
“Just under two years ago, we had nothing. We had no headquarters, we had no equipment, we had no balls, we didn’t even have a squad. We had nothing. And in the space of a couple of years, we’re a fully fledged Super Rugby franchise, that’s come within three points of winning this season, in four games. Those really fine margins. And so I look at what we’ve achieved, I see the sweat and blood that the players and coaches have put in, and I see what we’re building here. And I’m excited.”
How does Moana Pasifika do better?
But, and here’s what the table tells us, zero from 13. How does Moana Pasifika do better?
With Mauger going, the first thing Moana Pasifika needs is a new coach. “I can’t give details, because it’s an ongoing process,” Sakalia says, “but there’s some really strong candidates out there. We’re really excited that there’s such interest, really strong interest."
That’s something Moana Pasifika can control. Some of what’s required is harder to manage.
Moana Pasifika is based in Tāmaki Makaurau/Auckland. It’s the place where the Blues have existed since Super Rugby began in 1996 (the Blues won the title that year, by the way, and won it again in 1997, weaving themselves into the city’s sporting DNA).
Moana Pasifika’s home games are played at Go Media (Mt Smart) Stadium, where the Warriors have been based since 1995.
In other words, Moana Pasifika entered a market that already had two famous and vastly established franchises, both with significant Pasifika fan bases.
Where there aren’t existing teams, where their presence would be almost miraculous in its capacity to transform the sense of what’s possible, is in Tonga and Samoa. Moana Pasifika have played one game in Samoa, and no games in Tonga. Why?
Sakalia tells me the total cost to Moana Pasifika of broadcasting their game out of Apia in April was almost $280,000.
$280,000.
The most expensive home game in Super Rugby.
What’s cruel about this is that Apia is where Moana Pasifika attracted their biggest crowd of 2023. What’s cruel about this is that rugby lovers in Samoa (and Tonga) are desperate to have teams visit. What’s cruel about this is that a team designed to grow the strength of rugby in Samoa and Tonga can’t afford to play there. (And that the teams who can afford to play there, don’t.)
(A shoutout to the Queensland Reds, here. Who agreed to play in Apia, made it such a great occasion, and brought a planeload of big spending supporters with them. Moana Pasifika, and Samoa, are grateful.)
Sakalia has a solution. If Samoa’s major problem as a venue is that every cable, every camera, every microphone, every technician involved in broadcasting a game from Apia has to be flown in, at such great cost, now is the time to build broadcast capabilities in Samoa and Tonga.
He leans forward. Way forward.
“Our intention is, we want to present a case, a proposal, to both MFAT (New Zealand’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade) and DFAT (the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade) in Australia, to say ‘here’s the economic opportunity for the Pacific’. We’re going to explain that a key impediment that’s preventing these games from happening is the cost of broadcasting. How can we increase the broadcasting capacity and capability in the Pacific? How can we make it fit for purpose for professional sporting events?”
This is serious. This proposal is going in. And Moana Pasifika’s belief is that if the TV issue is resolved, then they’ll be better able to compete. “Home” games will not be an impediment, they will not carry a huge and unsupportable cost, they will be a strength.
The Fijian Drua demonstrate the possibilities here. Thanks to a way more established broadcasting infrastructure in Fiji, in part the result of a direct and highly successful investment in being able to host sporting events, the Drua’s home games have provided the best atmosphere in Super Rugby, by far. A treat so sparkling they’ve made most other crowds look afternoon nap time at The Autumn Leaves Retirement Home.
And if we compare the Fijian Drua with Moana Pasifika, we see a striking difference. Moana Pasifika have won no games this season. The Fijian Drua have won five – four of them in Fiji. (The other in Auckland, against, sigh, Moana Pasifika.)
Because it matters
If you build it, they will come.
Outside the CEO’s office, training is over.
I wander out and meet Christian Lealiifano and Sekope Kepu. 26 and 110 appearances for Australia, respectively. Greats. Kepu one of the all time greats. The most capped prop in Australian history. And here they are, with Moana Pasifika. I ask them why?
Because it matters.
They both tell me how different it is from other teams.
They talk about pese (song/hymns) and lotu (prayer) and how when they start a day with it, or training with it, it reminds them who they are, together.
Kepu says: “To be back here and experience what I experienced as a kid, and just be Pasifika and Tongan, I’m a very proud Tongan man, and to be able to practise that daily, and speak it, and play for a team that has its calls in Tongan and Samoan, that’s an amazing thing."
Lealiifano, who turns 36 in September and looks like he can keep playing rugby for many years, tells me ‘it’s like you’re at home, you know".
"Just connecting with guys that get you. You don’t have to explain who you are and what you’re here for. They know. I love that. The way our culture connects us. It makes it really different and special. So special."
I meet Miracle Faiʻilagi, whose story is emblematic of what Moana Pasifika exists for. Samoa-born and raised, somehow not scouted by a New Zealand school, playing Sevens in Samoa, signed by Moana Pasifika, and rapidly becoming the kind of player the crowd wants to see with ball in hand. A genuine Moana Pasifika success story.
He tells me what it was like to go home with the team and play in Apia. His family home is a short drive from the ground. His mother came to the game. She was so proud she cried.
Pride.
The points table doesn’t tell that story. Zero from 13 doesn’t tell that story.
But on a Thursday afternoon at the end of this difficult season, you can see it.
Something is being built here.
Kepu, who’s played so many games of rugby that he’s familiar with all its narratives, all its motivational speeches, all its real and manufactured hype, tells me why we should all hope that Moana Pasifika succeed.
“We all know that we’re representing people from all over the globe. Pasifika people all over the globe. We get people from the States and the UK and Europe messaging us and wishing us luck. People who’ve never seen us play.
"We mean something to them. Because we’re a Pasifika team, with Pasifika players, and we’re in this competition. We’re not an Auckland team, or a Waratahs team from New South Wales, we’re representing all our Pacific Islands. And all the people from them. Wherever they are. All those people. Everywhere.”
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