Super Rugby is in the middle of an existential fight with rugby league — and the decision to cut Moana Pasifika from the competition is a bigger warning sign than most fans realise. That was the message from rugby analyst Brendan Shields on the latest HG Rugby podcast, where host Harry Gudgeon opened with the bombshell news that the Samoan side is set to leave Super Rugby for financial reasons.
"Huge to go from Adi Cakobau in '25 to death in '27 is a bit of a drop," Shields said. "I feel horrible for the rugby program in Samoa. We've seen just the pure gold that Fiji were able to extract from the Fijian Drua team being settled and them not losing so many of their players to Europe and to Argentina. We all felt that Samoa was going to go in the same way and that we would have two extremely strong Islander teams, and then you could later on bring Tonga into the fray as well. So, it's very disappointing. But money talks."
The analyst argued the real damage runs beyond Super Rugby. "You want to have them as strong as possible for the World Cup," he said. "Europe just going to swallow up all the talent from Samoa now again, which then leads to that lack of cohesion around World Cup time. We've got to keep them in the south."
Shields suggested SANZAAR now faces a hard question about where the displaced Samoan players end up. "Can we get most of them into Aussie, for example, where depth has always been an issue?"
Then came the more uncomfortable point: New Zealand rugby is no longer fighting for hearts and minds on its own turf. Shields pointed to the Warriors' rise in the NRL and the All Blacks' recent dip as a collision course that is reshaping the entire code.
"Two words, so rugby league," he said when asked why Super Rugby keeps tinkering with law variations. "In the last two years they've seen a watershed moment in New Zealand with the Warriors. Their NRL team started performing really well at the same time that the All Blacks had a bit of a dip. If you're an All Black fan that's been used to winning for so long, as soon as things don't go your way, you tend to want to look elsewhere. The bad timing of the Warriors doing well at the same time as the All Blacks having a bit of a dip has caused the New Zealand Rugby Union to have to look over their shoulder and be wary of the threat of league."
He laid out how the NRL's financial firepower — "huge sponsors from the gambling industry" — has been pulling New Zealand schoolboys out of union. "A lot of New Zealand kids that would have played for the All Blacks — you think of Etene Billings being a good example — he went over to Australia, played rugby union in a school in Brisbane, but the idea was always for him to become a league player."
Shields said a trip to Brisbane drove the point home. "I had some mates from New Zealand come over for the magic round of the NRL in Brisbane. These are people who you'd never associate with a league game in your life, and all of a sudden they here supporting the Warriors. Over time that is, for a small country like New Zealand, going to create a lot of trouble."
The HG Rugby analysis also pointed to what is working. The Hurricanes, unbeaten at the top of Super Rugby Pacific, have built their lead on defence as much as attack — "despite having played a game fewer, have scored four more tries than the Chiefs in second place, but conceded 10 fewer," Gudgeon noted.
Shields said the Canes were "perfecting the way all New Zealand coaches have wanted to play for eons — really strong, very direct running game. Their wingers are scoring a lot of tries, but that comes off the back of fairly direct play." Australian teams, he suggested, are following a Brumbies-style blueprint of patient, pragmatic rugby that becomes harder to beat as winter bites.
But the overarching message was blunt: if Super Rugby cannot match the NRL commercially, the Moana Pasifika situation will not be the last contraction. "You can't carry these teams," Shields said. "No one has the kind of money these days to throw after professional rugby teams."
