Former All Black Murray Mexted has ridiculed the decision by on-fire Hurricanes winger Fehi Fineanganofo to join PREM Rugby strugglers Newcastle Red Bulls instead of trying to compete for a place in Dave Rennie’s Test squad.
The 23-year-old Fineanganofo has lit up the 2026 Super Rugby Pacific season with his try exploits, scoring 10 times to help his team into first place after eight matches.
However, the 2024 rugby sevens Olympian came into the campaign having signed a two-year deal to move to England for the 2026/27 PREM Rugby season rather than duke it out in New Zealand for a place in the All Blacks squad.
New money has come into Newcastle since their takeover by Red Bull, but this changeover has yet to manifest itself on the pitch as they remain bottom of the league with just a single win in 13 matches.
“That’s where the focus should be…”
Their squad is being overhauled in time for next season when Fineanganofo will join along with a plethora of other new signings, but Mexted can’t get his head around why the up-and-coming winger has opted to exit New Zealand coming into his prime rugby years.
Appearing on the latest edition of the Devlin Sports Podcast Network show hosted by Martin Devlin, the 72-year-old Mexted, who played in 34 consecutive Test matches for the All Blacks from 1979 to 1985, was asked to share his opinion on overseas selection.
His response was blunt, insisting that New Zealand should not alter its current policy of only selecting locally based players at Test level. He went on to criticise the NZR for its alleged poor leadership in recent times and called out the weakening of the grassroots game.
He also took umbrage at Fineanganofo and his decision to quit Super Rugby for the PREM at such an early stage in his promising career.
The debate reared its head when Devlin put it to Mexted that New Zealand players should surely be allowed to remain eligible for the All Blacks if they went off to play for a Super Rugby team in Australia, claiming that Sydney and Brisbane were beautiful cities to live in and were only a short flight away.
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Mexted, though, couldn’t agree. “I want the game to be strong for years to come,” he insisted. “When you start letting your players go away and play for other teams, the standard of the competition within New Zealand drops. I’m talking about that at the moment with Super Rugby.
“We’re getting away with guys that aren’t big enough when it comes to playing against South Africa at six and eight. We’re getting away with it. So, the more you dilute the New Zealand competition, the two guys that last ran NZR neglected club rugby and it’s a gradual demise of club rugby.
“I was talking about it this morning with a friend of mine, actually, the number of teams around clubs here in the Bay of Plenty and in Wellington, and the demise of rugby is real and I don’t think it is being well managed in the last couple of leaders of our NZR – and that’s where the focus should be.
“It should be on grassroots and developing that game so we get as many players as we can that are contesting at the top level who can compete when it comes to playing against the big boys. I am anti-players going away.
“If guys play for years for New Zealand and they go on this so-called sabbatical to Japan, that’s fine. They have done the hard yards, they have made the team, they have stayed in the team. Give them a break because a change is as good as a rest in some respects, and the atmosphere up there in those clubs is completely different from ours down here. Completely different.
“So, a change in environment sometimes can make a player better, but when you are in your prime like the winger for the Hurricanes at the moment (Fineanganofo), who is going off to play for Newcastle, I don’t know whether anybody has told him, but it’s bloody cold in Newcastle. You would never wear shorts in Newcastle and if you were going for a surf, you’d have to have a 4/3 wetsuit, and you can hardly paddle… it’s bloody cold.”
Devlin cut in and put it to Mexted that picking players based overseas has been a successful policy for some other countries, so why not New Zealand?
“Other countries have to do that because they never had the players and the internal competition,” replied Mexted. “Other things happen, and the South African situation, England of course and Europe is a lot closer and it’s easier for them to go.
“They have so many rugby players; the more they get an opportunity, the bigger the talent pool is going to become, and that is what Rassie (Erasmus) has done over the last few years.
“For us, we need that too, we need to keep our talent pool up so that there is real competition so that instead of having 6ft 2 loose forwards, we have 6ft 4 and 6ft 5 loose forwards.
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“That’s my belief, keep the game strong and unfortunately if you want to play for the All Blacks, which not only is a great honour because it is the top of rugby throughout the world, the All Black team is in that top two or three players year in and year out for 100 years and it’s a great honour to play at that level and it makes your brand worth a lot more as an individual.
“So, when you do either get dropped or you want to move off overseas after giving it a good whack here, you can go away and get a lot more money because you have got that AB behind your name. People probably forget about that.
“To see a guy going in his prime to Newcastle, I can’t see the benefit. He is not going to get much ball; they’ll kick the hell out of the ball, the 10 will kick the ball all day long, it will be cold and wet, his fingers will be shivering. I reckon after one year he will be going, ‘Oh, I’m not sure I made the right choice here’. Let’s see.”