3 Apr 2018

No changes planned - potential Warriors owners

10:08 am on 3 April 2018

The head of a consortium that has a verbal agreement to buy the NZ Warriors says they wouldn't change anything about the current team after its strong start to the season.

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Photo: PhotoSport

Pacific Sports International says the paperwork behind the deal is with the team's majority owner Eric Watson after disagreements over the structure of the sale of the Auckland-based rugby league club were ironed out.

It hoped to sign a deal soon.

Richard Fale, the chief executive of the Hawaii-based consortium, said the group of professional athletes from New Zealand, the Pacific Islands and the United States were interested in the Warriors because it was a reflection of their own stories, and the struggles and challenges they had faced.

"It's a great family, with the Warrior fans who have maintained that loyalty and dedication to a team despite its struggles, that is now looking at a great amount of success."

He told Morning Report that with the Warriors opening their 2018 season with four straight wins, the consortium would change "absolutely nothing" about the team after the sale was finalised.

"The players are playing with emotion and passion on the field, you can see that they want it. You can feel the hunger and they're showing the maturity of just finding a way to win, and when you're talking about championship teams, they just find a way to win."

Mr Fale would not give any more details on the other members of the consortium, but said they were overwhelmingly a group of Pacific Islanders who had mostly recently retired from the NFL in the United States.

"After the deal is inked, we will have a full revelation of everybody who is involved in the group."

He said a major factor of the group was that they were all going back to the sports they first loved, such as league.

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