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The founder of a Māori and Pacific-led professional rugby club says they have the finances, plan and people to keep the Moana Pasifika franchise afloat despite being rejected in their attempts to buy the license last year.
Tracy Atiga (Ngāti Te Reinga, Falealupo, Pago Pago) is the CEO of Kanaloa Rugby, a consortium made up of former professional rugby players and administrators of Pacific heritage.
Atiga told Pacific Waves she was devastated when she learned that Moana Pasifika will be disbanded at the end of the Super Rugby Pacific 2026 season.
Despite telling Pacific Waves in February that Moana Pasifika was “here to stay”, the franchise’s CEO Debbie Sorensen confirmed last week that they made the difficult decision to disband due to financial pressures and structural challenges.
In an interview with RNZ’s Morning Report, Sorensen said they are hopeful someone could step in and save the club, explaining that they had gone out to market for investors that didn’t “bear any fruit”.
However, Atiga said Kanaloa Rugby had put forward their proposal to buy Moana Pasifika last year in October, but received a response from Deloitte in December informing them that Moana’s owners, the Pasifika Medical Association (PMA), would not proceed with Kanaloa’s bid.
Pointing to Sorensen’s media interviews, Atiga said she does not appreciate the narrative of the “poor cousin” talk.
“It’s been many years, actually 30 years, basically the history of Super Rugby, where our leaders keep saying stuff like, you know, ‘we just don’t have the money and we need more money’.
“We don’t really agree with that narrative and I think it needs to change for Pasifika people, so that we know we don’t have to be that way. We don’t have to have our hand out all the time. We can do this ourselves.”
Atiga said Deloitte’s outcome was delivered as a phone call, letting them know “they couldn’t move on from past events”, but when Atiga queried what those events were, there was no response.
Kanaloa Rugby previously proposed to establish a Pacific team in 2020 for the new-look Super Rugby competition that launched in 2022, but were unsuccessful.
This kicked off a legal battle after Atiga claimed New Zealand Rugby breached its own rules by choosing the Moana Pasifika bid that had the backing of Sir Michael Jones and Sir Bryan Williams, even though the group had not taken part in the formal tender process.
Subsequently, Kanaloa Rugby was also looking into establishing Hawaii’s first professionl rugby union team to join America’s Major League Rugby competition but nothing came of it when after Hawaiian state senator Glenn Wakai questioned its plans.
Atiga said recent talks with New Zealand Rugby has been positive and that they have engaged with Chris Lendrum, who will conclude his role at NZR by the end of May.
“We had some pretty frank discussions around what might have happened in the past that they didn’t agree with, but equally, I was able to share with New Zealand Rugby, the frustrations that we had at the time around transparency and honesty, and building trust with the Pasifika communities,” she said.
She said the demise of Moana Pasifika should prompt honest conversations, particularly how it was set up and the development of the franchise’s business model that came from Deloitte in partnership with New Zealand Rugby Players Association and New Zealand Rugby.
“I think everybody’s responsible for the model that was developed, it was a grant-based model and it was set up on a trust initially, and then it moved to a limited liability company a year after.
“There’s a lot of key players who were involved and still are involved now that do have responsibility for how it was set up and potentially now why it failed.
“Especially when you had us at the table saying that ‘this isn’t going to work under that type of model’ and you need this type of model to be sustainable.”
Atiga said they are “ready to go” and have been for five years but that it is up to New Zealand Rugby, and the owners of Moana Pasifika, on how they want to proceed with the franchise’s license.
Moana Pasifika CEO Debbie Sorensen has been approached for comment to Atiga’s claims but has declined to provide a response.
‘Vital pathway’
Moana Pasifika’s outgoing coach says the club’s likely exit from Super Rugby could have consequences for the game in the region.
Fa’alogo Tana Umaga told the Sydney Morning Herald Moana had been a vital pathway for young Tongans and Samoans.
“The gap between where we are currently in terms of Samoa and Tonga internationally to where we need to get to is very big,” Fa’alogo told the outlet.
“In the last four years, Samoa just scraped into the World Cup. The previous cycle before that was Tonga [just making it]. And if we keep going the way we’re going, we don’t want it to happen, but the possibility is that Samoa or Tonga might not make the next cycle of the World Cup.”
Fa’alogo said to make rugby stronger, there needs to be pathways and opportunities for players to learn how to be better professionals.
“If there’s nothing to compete against, then I’m sure that [league taking over] is probably something that we’ve got to be thinking about. That’s the real risk.
“It’s fine if we’re not there, but then what for Samoa and Tonga? Rugby league’s got a great product at the moment, and it’s very popular.”
Tonga and Samoa are set to receive a big funding boost from the Australian government.
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