For a long time, commentators mangling the names of Māori and Pasifika players have been one of the NRL’s least cherished traditions. While the NRL and its major media partners have made more of an effort in recent years to get players’ names right, the results are still decidedly mixed.

Aotearoa/New Zealand sports writer Stephen Gallagher has stepped into this linguistic void, providing a solution that has seemingly eluded a multimillion-dollar sports body and some of the country’s biggest media companies: a comprehensive pronunciation guide.

From Kulikefu Finefeuiaki to Ray Stone, Gallagher’s compilation comprises audio and phonetic pronunciations of all 510 players in the top-30 squads of the NRL’s 17 first-grade men’s teams. He’s quick to point out the guide is likely imperfect; he’s not a linguistics expert. But it is miles better than what often gets offered up on Friday nights and Saturday afternoons by people paid to say NRL players’ names for a living.

“As a Kiwi, you listen to some of the commentators and kind of laugh at the pronunciation or lack thereof,” he says. “It’s no fault of their own – it’s obviously just a lack of knowledge and understanding. You sit on the couch and think you could do a better job than them, but when the game’s going 100 miles an hour, it can be difficult to get people’s names in there at high pace.”

Australian rugby league looks very different from the days when every second player was named Ray. In the modern game, nearly 50% of athletes across the NRL and NRLW have Māori and Pasifika heritage. But parts of the code have failed to keep up with the changing demographics of the sport’s player base.

Former players like Nigel Vagana and Dene Halatau have repeatedly called on NRL commentators to learn the correct pronunciation of Māori, Polynesian and Melanesian names.

“The correct pronunciation of Pasifika and Māori names may seem minor to some, but to the player, their name speaks to their close ties to the rich historical roots of the families, tribes and villages they respectively belong to,” says the Rugby League Players Association player transition manager and former Penrith Panther, Joe Galuvao.

“This gives purpose, meaning and a sense of identity. To have players’ names pronounced in the respect that it should be said, honours not only the player and their family, but the person also genuinely attempting to say it as well.”

In fits and starts, the NRL has slowly modernised. In 2023 the code introduced Pasifika culture competency training to educate players and staff about Māori and Pasifika culture. In 2022, Nine’s Wide World of Sports announced a partnership with Brisbane-based Talanoa Consulting to promote cultural competency across its sports broadcasting. The partnership was brokered by the former New Zealand international and Nine commentator Sonny Bill Williams, who has long been vocal about the NRL’s need to better support Māori and Pasifika players.

But Gallagher believes correct pronunciations of players’ names is one area in which the game needs to improve.

“For a long time in New Zealand, you didn’t want to associate yourself with being Māori. It wasn’t cool. But now there’s more of a movement around it. People are proud of who they are,” he says. “There’s space for the NRL to do some of that in Australia as well. The multicultural round they had last year was great – showing where players are from and giving them a reason to be proud of that.”

Besides being a longsuffering Dragons fan, Gallagher has rugby league pedigree. A longtime writer for Aotearoa/New Zealand sporting site Sportsfreak, Gallagher managed the Victoria Hunters rugby league team in Wellington before moving to Sydney in 2023.

“Footy’s always been in my blood,” he says. “My grandfather was a groundsman at Mt Smart Stadium for a long time back in the day – he might’ve invented the Mt Smart shuffle, where fans start leaving at half-time because the Warriors are down.”

He began working on a pronunciation guide last year, exhaustively researching how to phonetically spell and audibly sound out each player’s name. After getting a positive response, he renewed the project for the upcoming 2024 season.

“It’s something I’m incredibly proud of,” he says. “I figured that if even one person picks this up and it puts a bit more emphasis on the correct pronunciation of Māori and Pacific Islander players’ names, then that’s a great outcome.”

While podcasters and smaller sports broadcasters have jumped on the guide, Gallagher hasn’t heard much from the NRL or its largest media partners.

“As someone of Māori heritage, I’d love to see more genuine effort. You see that around the [pre-season] Māori and Indigenous All Stars game – there’s quite a lot of emphasis around getting players’ names right – but it almost feels like it goes away when round one of the season starts,” he says.

“Last year State of Origin brought back the old player introductions, where the players said their own names and gave their junior clubs a shoutout, and that got a huge response. You’d think that a massive organisation like the NRL that prides itself on diversity and a game that has about 50% Māori and Pasifika people in it, a little initiative like this could’ve been on their website for five years already.”

The NRL could not be reached for comment.

• This article was amended on 4 March 2024 because Nine’s Wide World of Sports announced a partnership with Brisbane-based Talanoa Consulting, not the Talanoa Consulting based in Fiji as an earlier version said.