Savea urges Moana Pasifika fans to join the Blues after folded club's final season

Ardie Savea has made a direct appeal to Moana Pasifika fans to follow him to the Blues after the Auckland-based franchise was folded ahead of the 2025 Super Rugby season, pledging to bring the same sense of cultural purpose that defined his sole campaign with the now-defunct club.

Savea captained Moana Pasifika through their final season, winning the Super Rugby Player of the Year award, but the team failed to reach the finals. Despite that, the All Blacks captain says the experience left a mark that went well beyond results.

“I think it’s playing for a bigger purpose than the team, and it’s playing bigger than getting a result on the Saturday,” Savea said at his Blues announcement. “The purpose is to bring people together, and even though Moana failed in terms of the rugby sense and not making finals, I think we brought Super Rugby back, and that was through the joy and the laughter and the fun, but also the hard work that we brought.”

With Moana Pasifika now absent from the 2025 competition, Savea is conscious of the fans left without a team to support and made his pitch plainly. “I just hope that the Moana fans can come on board with the Blues fans, and we create something special this year.”

For Savea, the move to the Blues — his third Super Rugby club — is as much about what happens off the field as on it. He described his vision of off-field success as “uniting our city through how we play, through how we do things; bringing laughter, joy, and excitement.”

“We represent so many ethnicities and cultures in Auckland,” he added. “So what a great chance not only to use rugby as a vehicle, but also through how we act ourselves and how we make people feel — give people hope through the way we play rugby, but also the way we are as people.”

Savea said his vision aligns with that of Blues CEO Karl Budge, and extends to making match days a broader entertainment experience that draws in new and younger audiences. He acknowledged that embracing change is never straightforward but framed the move as a deliberate act of ambition.

“Us as humans, we fear change, but for us to be pioneers, we’ve got to be brave enough to jump off the edge and do things differently,” he said. “It might not pay off, but at least you can look back and say we tried.”