Super Rugby Pacific's 2025 Special Rounds: Culture, Kids & ANZAC
Super Rugby Pacific's 2025 Special Rounds: Culture, Kids & ANZAC
Discover Super Rugby Pacific's 2025 special rounds—Culture, Kids, and ANZAC Weekend—celebrating diversity, youth, and remembrance. Stream live on FloRugby!
The Super Rugby Pacific regular season features a gruelling 16-round schedule where the competition is unforgiving, and the margins for error are razor-thin.
But a few times a year, however, a given round has another meaning attached to it.
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The competition’s calendar has evolved over the years to feature round-specific promotional weekends that all clubs participate in to highlight, celebrate and memorialize. Three such weekends are on tap for the soon-to-be kicked-off 2025 season, and for those in North America who are coming around to one of the top club rugby competitions in the world, it’s worth a look to understand what’s ahead.
Here’s a look ahead at the three special rounds that’ll take place later this year in Super Rugby Pacific, which will be streamed live and exclusively on FloRugby in the U.S. and Canada:
Culture Round (Round 3)
In what’s turned into an annual and celebrated tradition on the Super Rugby Pacific calendar, the Culture Round acknowledges and gives a spotlight to the “incredible diversity of cultures that come together in rugby,” as tournament director Matt Barlow put it when the competition held its Culture Round in the 2023 season. This year’s version will take place in Round 3, held from Feb. 28-March 1.
From Moana Pasifika having prematch traditional Pasifika dances before its match against the Chiefs last season to a Maori whakatau (welcome) being held as teams came out onto the pitch for the Blues’ clash against the Hurricanes, the Culture Round adds a little extra intensity to some already high-stakes matches while paying homage to the many walks of life that make up elite-level rugby in the south Pacific.
Fans in attendance at Culture Round games are encouraged to sing, dance and overall take pride in the diversity and backgrounds that help make the game special, and clubs — along with officials in some matches — will often wear heritage-themed jerseys to pay tribute, as well, such as when the New South Wales Waratahs wore Australian First Nations-inspired jerseys a season ago that were designed by player Dylan Pietsch, who is of Wiradjuri (an Aboriginal Australian people) ancestry.
Though all 10 teams competing in Round 3 will participate in this year’s Culture Round (minus the Crusaders, who will be on a bye week), look for Super Rugby Pacific’s two clubs that most identify with Pasifika/islander culture, Moana Pasifika and the Fijian Drua, to especially bring the house down with celebrations and have a little extra motivation to compete in their scheduled matches that weekend against the Highlanders and Waratahs, respectively.
Kids Round (Round 5)
Remember when you were a young sports fan and how you wanted to be like the heroes that you looked up to from your favorite teams?
Well, in Super Rugby Pacific’s annual Kids Round (to be held this season in Round 5), young rugby fans get exclusive, unique looks behind the scenes at clubs across the competition, creating plenty of memories that’ll stick for a lifetime and giving them experiences beyond their wildest dreams.
Youth-focused engagement opportunities are the name of the game in the Kids Round, in which Super Rugby Pacific teams hold various promotions and activities that provide family-friendly fun with a focus by and for children. From free tickets and food and beverage vouchers to dedicated “kids zones” (such as what the Brumbies did last season) featuring opportunities for face-to-face meetings with some of their favourite players, all clubs during the Kids Round ensure that their younger supporters get the spotlight — and, if they’re lucky, they’ll get to see their favourite team win, too.
Every Super Rugby Pacific player was a wide-eyed kid once, watching from the stands as they cheered on the club they loved with fervent passion. Some children in attendance today at Super Rugby Pacific matches will become Super Rugby Pacific players tomorrow, and a special round to highlight them specifically will only help to grow their love of the game and bolster their own sporting aspirations down the line.
ANZAC Weekend Round (Round 11)
For decades, Anzac Day — observed on April 25 each year as a day of remembrance honouring members of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) who fought in World War I — has been a celebrated part of sporting culture in Australia, New Zealand and Tonga, all three countries of which have pinned the day as a public holiday (for those reading this that are used to American holidays, think of it as the equivalent to Memorial Day in the U.S.).
Though the annual Anzac Day match in Australian rules football between Collingwood and Essendon, in which as many as 100,000 people will cram into the colossal Melbourne Cricket Ground, is the most well-known sporting tradition to take place on the holiday, Super Rugby Pacific also hosts a jam-packed slate for that time of the year for those who prefer spending the holiday weekend watching rugby union.
For those people for which that applies to, Round 11 of the upcoming Super Rugby Pacific season is catered to them.
The competition held its inaugural ANZAC Weekend Round in the 2024 season, in which games that took place in Australia and New Zealand had holiday ceremonies in honour of those in each country who have served in the armed forces. And when the Fijian Drua hosted Moana Pasifika that same weekend in a rivalry clash between Super Rugby Pacific’s two Pacific islands-based clubs, the Drua helped to provide a fundraiser for the annual poppy appeal to support military veteran-related causes.
The action that’s on display throughout the Super Rugby Pacific calendar is always entertaining, of course, but on ANZAC Weekend Round, everyone on the pitch also gets a powerful reminder of how and why they have the freedom to play the game that they love.
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