With Moana Pasifika’s demise who will rise to shape Pacific rugby’s future?

News that Moana Pasifika ends after the 2026 Super Rugby Pacific season has come as a punch to rugby, and left the Pacific community reeling. The franchise mattered because among other things, it gave Pacific people more than a team to support. It gave Pacific communities a glimpse of institutional presence. Its loss demonstrates, once again, that though we may be visible everywhere, Pacific peoples have yet to control the conditions of that visibility or success.

That is important. Pacific peoples have always been present in elite rugby, and sustained the game on and off the field. What has been far less common is Pacific control over the institutions that profit from that effort, sacrifice, and pride.

So when Moana Pasifika was established in 2022, it was not simply another jersey, or another brand or ad campaign. To Pacific people, including myself, it represented the possibility that we might not only feature in New Zealand rugby, but also organise, lead, and govern a professional franchise of our own, in our own way.

News that the franchise is set to leave Super Rugby Pacific should not diminish the work done by those who fought to bring Moana Pasifika into being. Creating a Super Rugby pathway for Pacific players in New Zealand and across the islands was a significant achievement, and one that deserved more than symbolic support.

That is why this exit has hit Pacific rugby communities and fans so hard.

It reveals that Pacific peoples can be central to the imagery, emotion, and labour of the game, and still remain peripheral to the real centres of power and authority. We can be celebrated culturally while being structurally vulnerable. We can be visible everywhere and still not control the conditions of that visibility or success.

That is the harder truth sitting underneath the grief.

Moana Pasifika chief executive Debbie Sorensen, who is also chief executive of Pasifika Medical Association which owns the Super Rugby club (though it operates within NZR’s broader licensing and governance framework), has said that with annual running costs of $10-$12 million, the franchise is not financially viable beyond 2026 without new investment.

Tracy Atiga, CEO of Pacific-led rugby consortium Kanaloa Rugby, has since publicly claimed it had the funding, the plan, and the people to step in, but that its buyout proposal was not accepted. Atiga says it still does not know exactly why, while Sorensen has also suggested there was a disconnect between parties. Whatever the full story turns out to be, these developments raise serious questions about governance, accountability, and who is trusted to shape Pacific rugby’s future.

And that is where this moves beyond sentiment.

Too often, Pacific inclusion in sport is described as proof that the rugby system is working. A Pacific team enters the competition, Pacific symbols and languages are elevated, Pacific players and communities see themselves reflected, and the story quickly becomes one of progress.

But progress for whom, and on whose terms? If the deeper structures of ownership, resourcing, governance, and authority remain largely untouched, what is being celebrated is not transformation. It is what’s known as managed inclusion.

And managed inclusion is always conditional. It lasts only so long as those who already hold power are comfortable with it.

This is why the questions raised around Kanaloa’s involvement matter. This is not to suggest every rejected bid is evidence of a conspiracy, or that Pacific-led ownership should be romanticised as beyond critique. It’s because the pattern is too familiar.

Pacific peoples are regularly trusted to perform, inspire, and represent, but we are far less trusted to own, govern, and control. Power, and lack thereof, reveals itself in who gets funded, who experiences barriers and delays, who gets ring-fenced, who gets described as credible, and which franchises are treated as necessary versus too risky.

This is not racism in the malicious sense, the type we are most comfortable recognising. It is structural racism, built into the design of settler colonial societies like ours. That means even well-meaning actions can still reproduce unequal outcomes.

Investment is never just about figures on a spreadsheet. It is also about trust, legitimacy, and institutional comfort. Capital flows towards those systems we recognise as safe, stable, and familiar, often dressed up as the neutral wisdom of the market. If change is not matched by a deliberate strategy to address the deep structural racial hierarchies this country is built on, we will keep circling back to the same place.

Compare Moana Pasifika with Fiji Drua, a professional rugby union team based in Nadi, Fiji that competes in the Super Rugby. Australia backed the Drua’s Super Rugby entry with A$1.8m through PacificAus Sports in 2021 and followed with a four-year A$14.2m rugby partnership to support pathways and high-performance development.

Just as importantly, the Drua is anchored in Fiji Rugby Union, not folded into New Zealand Rugby or Rugby Australia. This is not to say the Drua model is perfect or outside the realm of power or geopolitics (nothing in Pacific sport is) but it shows what things can look like when real money, real structure, and clearer local control are put behind the idea.

This is why the exit of Moana Pasifika cannot be brushed off as simple financial reality. Yes, Super Rugby is under pressure more broadly; the Hurricanes have admitted that, for many franchises, the current model makes it difficult to break even without finals revenue.

The question is not only whether money is tight but also why a Pacific franchise appeared to occupy such a fragile place in the system. That points us away from the comforting language of financial constraint, and towards the harder realities of governance, allocation, and institutional priority.

Moana was trying to establish itself in a saturated Auckland market while competing for attention, audiences, sponsorship, and corporate support alongside entrenched franchises. In that kind of setting, a Pacific team cannot survive on symbolism alone, or on borrowed goodwill, inspirational language, and financially stretched Pacific communities. It needs long-term institutional backing and room to breathe.

That is why this is not just a rugby story. It is about whether Pacific inclusion is still about providing the face, labour, and culture while others retain control.

This moment should force a reckoning.

Otherwise, Pacific people will remain central to the story, but never in control of how it ends.