Chiefs 2026
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Manasa Mataele has signed with the Drua.
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With only three NDC contracts available now, it will be interesting to see who they are. Jack Wiseman would have to be one. Some other possibilities are Bradley Tocker, David Lewai, Taniela Maisiri, or some of the NZS reps (e.g., Ollie Guerin, Jamie Viljoen, Hunter Weaver).
I would think that a player like Micah Fale, who had a 2025 NDC contract, will be with the wider squad.
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@Bovidae said in Chiefs 2026:
The SR teams should provide this basic information.
This was the kind of stuff I thought the new independent boss of Super was going to implement when the role was announced with fanfare a couple of years back. It seems no better centralised than back when the countries were doing their own thing.
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@frugby said in Chiefs 2026:
@Nepia As a general rule teams have gotten better at announcing contract lengths, and I think fan engagement is in a much better spot than it was five years ago, but there is still a long way to go.
I've got a friend who does social media marketing, they could hire her part time and she'd cover that long way to go in a very short time - she would nag the fuck out of people until they provided her the info.
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All teams have a list of their squads with player bios on their websites. Including the contract length should be mandatory along with age, PU etc. Using the Chiefs as an example, some players have had contracts renewed in recent years but there has been no media release.
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The Chiefs went through I heard 4 media managers last season (Feb-Jun) alone. Take from that what you will but I assume it means they aren’t paid well, the workload is immense and the built in knowledge of this is how we do things doesn’t exist
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@zedsdeadbaby said in Chiefs 2026:
The Chiefs went through I heard 4 media managers last season
That doesn't sound right. Pretty sure Kyra Alexander does the media and she's been there a while.
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Sorry - I didn’t mean Kyra, I mean their media managers dealing with the media. Apologies.
My understanding is Kyra does a (very good) job with their digital media but their media/communications (ie releases and news on their website), is led by Alyse - but she was the fourth person who did the role last year IIRC.

