'We might not necessarily have the choice': Future uncertain for Moana Pasifika

Moana Pasifika will play just their second game of the Super Rugby season when they take on the Chiefs on Saturday evening at Mt Smart Stadium.

With Covid impacting the squad over the opening two weekends of action, Moana Pasifika's contests with the Blues and Chiefs were both postponed and had initially been scheduled to take place as midweek fixtures later in the season. While the Pacific Islanders were able to finally get their campaign underway in Round 3 against the Crusaders, the Hurricanes then pulled out crook last weekend and the Highlanders have had to do the same for the current round of fixtures.

With the postponed games quickly piling up, New Zealand Rugby in association with the affected teams quickly made the call to adjust the schedule for this weekend. While the Chiefs were set to play the Hurricanes, the Wellingtonians have instead been given the weekend off and teed up a match between the Chiefs and Moana Pasifika on the basis that it would be easier for both the Hurricanes and Moana Pasifika to make up just two postponed matches each, instead of Moana Pasifika somehow having to fit three midweek games into their schedule later in the season.

It's not the ideal scenario, but Moana Pasifika will take what they can get.

"Obviously grateful to be playing anybody, to be fair," said head coach Aaron Mauger. "We probably would have played on the airport runway if we had to. Desperate for a game, and keen to get out there."

"We’d have liked to have had a few more under our belt, but circumstances have dictated that that hasn’t been the case, so the focus has really been on our game, really grown our own game and executing our own game, understanding how that looks in this competition," he added.

"The last couple of weeks have given us a good opportunity to learn from the Crusader game. It didn’t really matter who we were going to play this week, the focus has been on ourselves.

"Up against a good Chiefs side, they’ve been really impressive in these first few rounds, so we respect the challenge that’s coming, but the focus has really been on understanding our game and putting that out there [on Saturday] night."

While there have unsurprisingly been some frustrations around the postponed matches and how they could have an impact later in the competition, Mauger said Moana Pasifika are simply focussing on one week at a time.

"We’ve only just brought our horizon forward to this weekend," he said. "We’re down to play the Hurricanes next weekend, but that could change. There’s been a bit of a restructure of the draw to accommodate for this weekend.

"We haven’t even really considered what that looks like at the moment. There’s been so many changes going on, we just wanted to put our focus into this week. We’ve got an awesome board and [backroom] staff that negotiate all those conversations for us at the moment, so we’ll get through this week and start planning for those early next week.

"Like I say, we’re really focused for this one, get through that, put a good performance out there, and then we’ll deal with the next game after this weekend."

Mauger was, however, pleased that his side have avoided having to integrate an additional fixture later in the season and that his team are able to get their season back on track in Hamilton.

"That would be challenging, three mid-week games. They’ll consider all those things [player welfare] and we might not necessarily have the choice if it’s around the competition, but we’ll do just do whatever’s best for our team. First and foremost, the safety of our players and the wellbeing of our players, and we’ll try and do our absolute best for the competition, make sure it survives in some sort of form going forward, and we’ll play our part where we can."

Moana Pasifika kick off their match with the Chiefs at 7:05pm NZT on Saturday from Mt Smart Stadium in South Auckland.