A message from our Chairman and President

On behalf of the Management Board we would like to welcome the Marist St Pats family to another season of rugby in 2021.

It's fair to say that Marist St Pats has been in the spotlight for the wrong reasons in the opening months of the year and as we turn our focus towards the season ahead we want to acknowledge the strong sentiment of our members and the rugby community, which have not gone unheard. We want to reiterate our position on this matter:

  • Marist St Pats condemns all violence. We are extremely disappointed with the actions of those involved because it goes against the principles of Marist St Pats and our participation in community sport. While we do not believe this is endemic in the culture of our club, we are taking actions to stamp out any complacency on this issue.
  • Wellington Rugby has a robust disciplinary process to deal with incidents of this nature. Marist St Pats respects the integrity of this process, has cooperated fully during the investigation and has accepted the sanctions.
  • While Marist St Pats has accepted all the sanctions of the judicial process, Petone has appealed the sanctions seeking to have additional bans on two of the players. Marist St Pats is currently working through this process and will share any updates once this is completed.
  • The players involved in this incident are part of the Marist St Pats community. We as a community have a duty of care to these young men and will continue to offer them the support they need to learn and grow from this incident. As a community we have to take the responsibility to educate the players and supporters.

The statement we made in February referred to some of the things we have done in response to this; we would like to share progress on other actions:

  • The players involved in this incident continue to attend formal counselling.
  • Senior players visited the parents of the young man involved at their homes and had an open and frank discussion in a culturally safe environment.
  • Our culture working group is continuing to review the policies and processes of the club and how these are brought to life. They will be conducting a survey of club members to ensure we get the perspectives of our diverse community before recommending actions to the board.
  • We have established a Pastoral Care programme, led by our Club Chaplain Fr. Pete Roe and in conjunction with New Zealand Rugby. Further details of this new initiative will be announced soon.
  • We have reviewed our internal disciplinary processes and developed our Disciplinary Committee to ensure we have a swift response to disciplinary issues in the future.

Marist St Pats is a club that is built on the efforts of those who wear the red jersey each weekend and the dedicated volunteers who enable them to do so. We will need the support of our entire club community to continue to grow from this incident.

Looking ahead to rugby: our players, coaches and management have been focused on preparing for the season ahead. We've had a committed group of men and women at preseason training and they will be well drilled by the time the season starts on 10 April.

We are also thrilled to welcome Coolmoves as our primary sponsor for the 2021 season and look forward to welcoming the Coolmoves team into the club community. We are looking forward to sharing more details about the delayed 50th Jubilee celebrations which are scheduled for Queen's Birthday weekend this year.

If you can't wait to see the Red Machine in action, come down to Evans Bay Park on 27 March as we host St Patrick's College, Johnsonville and Nelson Marist in preseason fixtures. We are looking forward to returning the great hospitality Nelson Marist showed us on our preseason visit to Nelson last year.

Best wishes,

Rob Evans and Ken Ah Kuoi


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