Poua offside and off the mark with protest

Consequences will crash down on the Hurricanes franchise, not the players who dragged it there.

If you’re a CEO here’s how to ruin your business; have your staff yell strident political views at customers, at least half of whom will disagree and close minds and wallets. No sane chief executive would adopt that as a strategy, so they’d be likely filled with rage if their staff banded together without consent and ran with the idea.

After women’s Super Rugby Aupiki team Hurricanes Poua performed a new haka using the phrase “karetao o te Kā-wana kaki-whero” or “puppets of this redneck Government”, their CEO, Avan Lee, said on Tuesday he was “disappointed”.

Lee wasn’t aware of anything in the pipeline, and there was no discussion or consultation. Probably, Lee had words stronger than disappointed, which remained unsaid.

Here’s the problem: more than 50% of voters opted for the National-NZ FirstACT coalition, so by extension it can be surmised that the Poua pissed off around half their fan base.

Given rugby’s rural strength, substantially more than 50% of rugby fans are now ardent anti-Poua. Goodbye ticket sales, goodbye jersey sales, goodbye viewers, goodbye $$$.

At a time when Wellington Rugby was pondering the sale of Hurricanes shares to relieve its financial stress it was – again with understatement – “unhelpful”. Thanks thousands, Poua.

With political actions come consequences, yet in this case those consequences will crash down on the Hurricanes franchise, not the players who dragged it there.

It works both ways. In 2021 Hurricanes board member Troy Bowker exited his shareholding two days after the board met over disparaging remarks he made to tech entrepreneur Sir Ian Taylor.

Bowker accused the animation entrepreneur of “sucking up to the left Māori-loving agenda”, prompting Hurricanes star TJ Perenara to say he wanted answers from team management about comments that contained “underlying racism”.

It’s said sport and politics don’t mix, but of course they do – the 1981 Springbok rugby tour, anyone? Sport and politics are both integral parts of society. You can’t separate them. Nor can the Hurricanes Poua haka be seen as separate from the Hurricanes franchise.

All Blacks Perenara, Brad Weber and Angus Ta’avao have all in recent times expressed what could be described as political views. So have tennis player Novak Djokovic, football commentator Gary Lineker, the divisive Israel Folau and US basketballer LeBron James.

All were personal views, and all drew personal attacks. Personal consequences, fair enough.

But a whole team at the foot of a fourteam table, all wearing the yellow of a single franchise? Not the same. Not even close.

Leilani Perese (Ngāpuhi) said the reaction from her team-mates was “Let’s do this!’’, ‘‘This is powerful!”, and all were on board. She talked to non-Māori.

“And why not use our platform to show our people we will never fold?,” she said. “To tell the Government that we are stronger than ever, and we will never go down without a war.”

Why not? Here’s why not – that “platform” was provided to you by your employers who have built the business up bit by bit since 1996. It was their platform, not yours. You were on it because the Hurricanes put you there.

And you misused it.