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The Mako ‘finatics’ is an exclusive membership scheme to help grow grassroots rugby in Tasman (Photo: Getty Images; additional design: Tina Tiller)
The Mako ‘finatics’ is an exclusive membership scheme to help grow grassroots rugby in Tasman (Photo: Getty Images; additional design: Tina Tiller)

BusinessSeptember 17, 2022

The Tasman Mako want you, rugby ‘Finatic’

The Mako ‘finatics’ is an exclusive membership scheme to help grow grassroots rugby in Tasman (Photo: Getty Images; additional design: Tina Tiller)
The Mako ‘finatics’ is an exclusive membership scheme to help grow grassroots rugby in Tasman (Photo: Getty Images; additional design: Tina Tiller)

New Zealand’s youngest provincial rugby team is fundraising by offering fans exclusive access to their inner sanctum. The future of Tasman rugby could depend on it.

Recently, an “outsider” voiced his plans to revolutionise rugby in Aotearoa. Too many rugby supporters hibernate after a season ends, according to Sky Television’s new head of commercial, Justin Nelson, who wants to transform their seasonal inertia into all-year-round “tribalism”.

Of course, rugby is an important investment to Sky TV, but Nelson’s mission could help steer the future direction of New Zealand’s national sport. Fans are a sport’s one constant, he says. “They can be there from the moment they’re born to the moment they die. Players aren’t. Coaches aren’t. Sometimes even teams and franchises aren’t.”

Sixteen years ago, Tasman Rugby Union (TRU) didn’t exist; it formed in December 2005 as an amalgamation of the Nelson Bays and Marlborough rugby unions. But New Zealand’s youngest provincial union has made a name for itself since – in 2019 and 2020, TRU won back-to-back National Provincial Championship (NPC) titles with the Tasman Mako, and has featured in six of the competition’s last eight finals.

The new union has already produced 11 All Blacks, 14 Māori All Blacks, nine New Zealand sevens players and three Black Fern sevens representatives. Symbolically, these players “throw up a fin” to celebrate tries, and fans make the winning gesture in solidarity. There’s even a hashtag: #FinzUp.

These days sporting codes are jostling for attention and loyalty, which have traditionally been earned through ticket sales and spectator numbers, TRU chief executive Lyndon Bray explains. But the union wanted an initiative that reached farther, lasted longer and bolstered an already strong sense of Tasman tribalism – and TRU has found it in an exclusive membership club, the Mako “Finatics”.

In return for apparel perks, personalised content from the team and unique behind-the-scenes experiences throughout the NPC season, Mako fans anywhere in the world can donate $55 per season over five seasons or a one-off payment of $250, with the money geared at developing the community game in Nelson, Marlborough and the wider region.

The union is aiming to sign up 10,000 fans within the next two to three years, achieved by drumming up support over successive NPC seasons and converting that interest into actual certificates. The CEO won’t divulge any numbers on actual certificates handed out, except to say the union has received “a whole lot of activated interest” since launching in late July.

The Green Bay Packers are the only publicly owned franchise in the NFL (Photo: Getty Images)

While the scheme is believed to be a world-first in rugby, fan ownership isn’t without precedent. The TRU looked to the Green Bay Packers for inspiration: for nearly 100 years, the NFL team from Wisconsin has been the only publicly owned franchise in the American football league. In 2021, just over 176,000 new shareholders were added to its share registry, bringing the total number to more than half a million, and about $111 million was raised.

Unlike the Packers, however, Mako Finatics won’t technically own a stake in the team – members won’t receive dividends or be able to trade actual shares. It’s “ownership in italics”, Bray says, but it’s potentially a springboard for more concrete contributions down the line. One day, a Finatic could join TRU’s board or help elect the union’s president. They’re merely suggestions at this stage, but the CEO agrees that incorporating democracy into the scheme fits well with the grassroots origins of rugby. 

Mako Finatic number one Murray Sturgeon is eager to continue supporting the provincial game. Sturgeon chairs Nelson Pine Industries, a wood processing company that has sponsored the union and its predecessors for nearly four decades. Businesses must be good corporate citizens, he says, listing Nelson Pine’s philanthropic endeavours, including sport – specifically rugby. “It keeps youth occupied and off the streets.”

In his personal capacity, however, Sturgeon the Finatic wants to support the development of Tasman’s next generation of players. “We have to look to the future,” he says, and Nelson Pine will be there – the company has renewed its sponsorship for another five years. “That takes us to 40 [years]. I think that’s a record in itself, isn’t it? But we do it for the good of the region and the good of the people.”

Mako finatics receive an ownership certificate, entitling them to exclusive perks in return for their sponsorship (Photo: Supplied)

The players are embracing the initiative too, “throwing each other under the bus in front of the camera, getting a fair bit of extra banter going on,” laughs Mako assistant coach James Marshall. He knows first-hand the value of having loyal fans – as Mako number 57, the former Hurricane and All Blacks sevens player played 36 games for Tasman between 2008 and 2011, a period of mixed success for the nascent union. Right from the beginning though, the homegrown support was palpable, he says, and it’s only intensified in recent years as the Mako have realised their championship-winning potential.

Fans, he says, make rugby the sport it is. “You realised that when Covid hit – the fans were taken away from the game, and it’s just not the same without them,” says Marshall. “You can really feel the difference when you’ve got that local support behind you.”

Mako fandom has gone global, too: Tasman players who receive All Blacks call-ups are eager to show spectators their provincial side’s fin-like callsign, with the likes of Will Jordan and David Havili “constantly crossing the line at the highest level, still proud of where it all started for them.” The salute, first credited to Mako great Andrew Goodman back in 2009, has become compulsory, not that the players mind. “The boys all love it,” Marshall says.

Mako Will Jordan gives the famous ‘fins up’ gesture after scoring (Photo: Getty Images)

Long-standing support and passionate players are all well and good, but the game has no future if youth aren’t willing to play it. Some teenage player attrition is natural, Bray explains – there’s no university in the region so school leavers who play rugby and want to pursue tertiary education leave Tasman to study and play elsewhere. Moreover, rugby is no longer the dominant cultural force it once was, with other, safer sports catching up in popularity among kids and their parents.

But Bray is confident that 15-a-side rugby will always exist, and that the Tasman pathway to becoming an All Black – through the Mako, then the Crusaders – will remain. TRU’s challenge is to “reinvigorate” participation among the region’s teenagers – and that’s where TRU hopes funds from Finatics will help. Possible innovations that the CEO lists include a more competitive, mixed-gender ripper rugby game or a regional secondary school rugby sevens “festival”. Even embracing touch rugby more could help – it’s a great example of a version of rugby that forgoes rugby union’s physicality for the dazzling skill of rugby sevens, Bray says. 

TRU CEO Lyndon Bray back in 2006, refereeing an NPC match (Photo: Getty Images)

Reimagining participation will come down to the sorts of people leading rugby unions and those sitting at their board tables. While it’s “absolutely important” that rugby’s traditional administrators are involved, it’s also necessary to attract new kinds of people to rugby, he says.  As a former professional referee, who also managed referees at national and international levels for two decades, Bray’s job was to maintain certainty and usher in innovation. And as a proud gay man, he’s acutely aware that rugby isn’t yet a space that enables men to play and live without hiding their sexuality.

Take the image of some local rugby clubs. Bray admits that how they present themselves to the public is part of the challenge “because, let’s face it, you walk into a rugby club and it still looks like it did in 1937”. If changing rooms aren’t up to scratch either, “then automatically you are saying to a whole group of players ‘we’re not fit for purpose’,” he says. “It’s very hard for them to feel like they have a real sense of belonging.”

‘Hutt Valley, Kāpiti, down to the south coast. Our Wellington coverage is powered by members.’
Joel MacManus
— Wellington editor

Creating a more inclusive version of community rugby will be difficult, Bray admits. But fostering a “lifelong commitment” to Tasman’s provincial game, in aid of strengthening the grassroots game, is the prize. “We talk about [the commitment] as every decade of your life – we want people to feel they have a meaningful relationship with rugby,” he says. “That’s what rocks my boat.”

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oat milk
A collection of the oat milks that have been hard to find. (Photo compilation: Tina Tiller)

BusinessSeptember 15, 2022

There is no oat milk shortage – so why are supermarket shelves always empty?

oat milk
A collection of the oat milks that have been hard to find. (Photo compilation: Tina Tiller)

After weekend hunt for a rare carton of oat milk, Chris Schulz seeks answers.

“We’re not facing an oat milk shortage,” says a Foodstuffs spokesperson. “We’ve got plenty of stock.”

“I’ve checked in with our team,” says a Countdown spokesperson, “and there’s no issue with our overall oat milk supply.”

“We have a secure supply,” says Simon Coley, co-founder of All Good oat milk. “It goes out to stores regularly.”

“We’re not facing any shortages ourselves,” says Boring Oat Milk founder Morgan Maw.

I’m confused. This past weekend, I visited not one, not two, not three, but four supermarkets, all on a desperate hunt for oat milk. My son guzzles the stuff like it’s liquid gold. He’s 12 and can’t handle dairy so downs up to a litre of alt-milk a day. Sometimes more.

He splashes it on his muesli, uses it in his chocolate smoothies and often just drinks giant glasses of it, plain and cold, straight from the fridge. Look, I did my best.

We normally have a stockpile, but lately oat milk seems like it’s getting harder to find. At every supermarket we trekked to, the oat milk was all gone. Most alternative milks were out of stock, with cardboard boxes sitting on sad empty shelves where fresh cartons of non-dairy milk used to be.

oat milk
An empty shelf of oat milk at Countdown. (Photo: Chris Schulz)

My son was bereft, distraught. He complained. Relentlessly. To me. Like I had something to do with it. So I did what any good journalist stuck in this situation would do and fired off some emails.

The responses did not clarify the situation.

I asked several supermarkets and oat milk founders if there was indeed an oat milk shortage. I expected the answer to be yes. After all, over the past two years we’ve grown accustomed to shortages from toilet paper to chicken nuggets to good old doughnuts.

But Foodstuffs, which owns New World and Pak’nSave, told me I was making it all up. “[It’s] going out to stores regularly,” they say, a sentiment that also came from Countdown. All Good’s Coley confirms they have solid supplies, and so does Boring’s Maw.

Were my eyes deceiving me? I was sitting at my desk at work scratching my head when a workmate came over with some good news. Three litres of organic Otis oat milk had been delivered to the office as part of a promo package, surely enough to tide my son over for a few days.

By the following morning, after gulping it down at breakfast, it was nearly all gone. He’d made up for lost time. When I checked in at my local supermarket later that day, I found one lone carton of Vitasoy sitting at the back of the shelf. One. I felt bad buying it – what if someone else had an oat milk-addict son like mine? – but I did it anyway.

If there’s really no oat milk shortage, where is it all? I decided to dig deeper. I asked more questions. Coley was the first to reply, and he confirmed oat milk sales are definitely up. “It’s the number one alternative milk,” he said. “Other alt milks like soy are out of stock which is bound to be increasing demand for oat milk.”

Hmm. I asked Maw the same question. She confirmed Boring’s sales are booming. “Last week was our biggest sales week ever, up about 40% on a typical week,” she said. “If Boring isn’t on a shelf, it’s because we’re selling too fast and the supermarkets can’t keep up with restocking it.”

There it is: oat milk’s selling so fast they can’t keep it on the shelf before it’s whipped away by thirsty consumers like us. Here’s where the countrywide staff shortages are having an impact. Product just isn’t getting to shelves as fast as we’re used to. Foodstuffs spokesperson Emma Wooster says: “It is cold and flu season, and with Covid on top I think most businesses are short on people from time to time.”

So there you have it. If oat milk, or any milk, or any other product you fancy, is out of stock at your local supermarket, your only option is to head out the back, find the pallets loaded with the boxes you want, and stock the shelves yourself.

Or maybe ask a staff member nicely to do it for you (if you can find one).

But wait there's more!