If you want a lesson in how to set up a business properly, then Moana Pasifika is not your guide. 

I wandered through the whole sorry saga in Kate MacNamara's excellent work, which took me back once again into how it all started and how most likely, even then, it was always going to end up the way it has. 

Sports Minister Mark Mitchell has said there is no public money for professional sport, and he is right. 

And yet before he ever arrived with his head screwed on properly, we were run by people who held a different view. 

Sport NZ is owed money. They will never get it back, given it's a loan and payments have already been missed. 

The team and its business case were doomed from the start. 

Ironically, I note the same company that did the business case, Deloittes, also got the job of trying to sell the joint last year. 

The figure of $5 million was bandied about. 

MFAT piled in financially, as in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. So that's political, not really sporting. 

Then you come to the various linked groups involved – Moana Pasifika Limited, Pasifika Medical Association, and Moana Pasifika Charitable Trust, as well as Pasifika Futures. 

The medical association claimed they had plenty of dough to run the thing. Why? Because of a contract Pasifika Futures had. Who was that contract with? Whanau Ora. 

So there's more public money. 

The bit of the contract that Pasifika Futures were clipping could pay for the rugby. They held the contract for over ten years. The last year alone was worth $44 million. 

The rugby team did the usual stuff for money like sponsorship and tickets but none of it covered the bills, far less paid back what was owed. 

And obviously no one is paying $5 million for a team that, to be frank, isn't that good and doesn’t attract a crowd. 

So what actually was it about? Fairies and unicorns. 

The young Pacific kid sees Ardie Savea running round the field and thinks "I can do that. So I'm going to eat well, run hard and be a star”. Or something like that. 

The fact they could look at any other team and see something similar doesn’t seem to have put the handbrake on a very bad business idea from day one. 

So we the taxpayer will lose yet more money from yet more folly. 

It's amazing how good ideas look when it isn't your money you're stumping up with. 

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