{"id":608579,"date":"2026-09-22T22:16:11","date_gmt":"2026-09-22T22:16:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/608579\/"},"modified":"2026-09-22T22:16:11","modified_gmt":"2026-09-22T22:16:11","slug":"chiefs-ceo-simon-graafhuis-says-club-has-right-to-protect-brand-from-png-nrl-team","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/608579\/","title":{"rendered":"Chiefs CEO Simon Graafhuis says club has \u2018right to protect\u2019 brand from PNG NRL team"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cSo, New Zealand Rugby\u2019s only doing what they\u2019re obligated to do and also what we\u2019ve asked them to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"NZNZ Rugby are in contact with the NRL over the naming of the PNG Chiefs. Photo \/ Getty Images<\/p>\n

Graafhuis explained he has not been involved in the direct communication between NZR and the NRL<\/a>, but was open to both sides coming to an arrangement.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs part of having a trademark, you\u2019ve got an obligation to defend it. You\u2019ve got to do that as soon as you can to minimise the damage to all parties.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, we\u2019re obviously hoping to bring it to a conclusion before there\u2019s a brand launch.\u201d<\/p>\n

The chief executive said this wasn\u2019t the Super Rugby club being against a team in PNG, but the key focus was protecting the brand identity of his team.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve been operating with it for 30 years, so I think we\u2019re well within our rights to actually protect it in the space we\u2019re both playing, over ball code, similar part of the world, both transtasman.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost fans of rugby also like league and vice versa, so there is a big crossover here and like I say, this is about the brand, it\u2019s not necessarily around the rest.\u201d<\/p>\n

In early September, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon claimed the PNG Chiefs were building the \u201cbest league team in the world\u201d<\/a> and said many New Zealanders will travel to the country to watch the new franchise play.<\/p>\n

The Chiefs have seven players on their roster so far, including Jarome Luai and former New Zealand international Joseph Manu.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cSo, New Zealand Rugby\u2019s only doing what they\u2019re obligated to do and also what we\u2019ve asked them to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":608580,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[27951,4463,3500,3937,17909,18836,13731,3938,71,299900,6871,16556,111,139,577,59741,69,1523,219782,30308,51721,9979,6327,3048,312,6037,213,313,7187,61],"class_list":["post-608579","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-19th","tag-brand","tag-ceo","tag-chief","tag-chiefs","tag-club","tag-dispute","tag-executive","tag-from","tag-graafhuis","tag-has","tag-naming","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nrl","tag-nrls","tag-nz","tag-over","tag-png","tag-protect","tag-regarding","tag-right","tag-rugby","tag-said","tag-says","tag-simon","tag-sports","tag-super","tag-team","tag-to"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/608579","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=608579"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/608579\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/608580"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=608579"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=608579"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=608579"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}