Backing grassroots sport: how local sponsorship sent the Peregian Saints to Fiji
Junior sport rarely runs on registration fees alone. Once a club decides to chase something bigger than a local season - a tour, a carnival, a chance for young players to represent their club beyond the Sunshine Coast - the cost of flights, accommodation and coaching quickly outpaces what families can cover on their own. For Peregian Saints Rugby Club, that gap was closed by local business backing, and in April 2026 it sent the club’s Under-15s squad on its first overseas tour: nine days in Fiji.
Peregian Saints is a junior rugby union club based in Peregian Springs, welcoming players aged 5 to 16 across boys’ and girls’ teams. In April 2026, the club’s Under-15s travelled to Pacific Harbour, Fiji, staying at the Uprising Beach Resort and flying with Fiji Airways for the club’s inaugural international tour.
The trip combined rugby with cultural exchange - matches against local sides, time spent in Fijian communities, and the kind of shared experience that a normal club season can’t offer. For a group of 14 and 15-year-olds, it was as much about the people they met and the friendships they made as it was about the game itself.
As the club put it: “Honestly, ‘amazing’ is the only way to describe it. There were laughs, tears, new friendships for both the kids and the parents — just an incredible experience all round. Being able to donate and assist along the way made it even more special.”
Saltair’s support wasn’t a one-off gesture. Communities and sports and recreation are among the sectors the company actively serves, and grassroots sponsorship is one of the more direct ways a construction business with deep Sunshine Coast roots can put that into practice - rather than funding something abstract, it’s funding a specific bus, a specific flight, a specific kid’s chance to pull on the jersey.
As gold sponsor of the tour, Saltair’s contribution sat alongside support from several other local businesses, including BrookSight Investigations, LakeView Dental, Physiotherapy Lab Marcoola and others - a reminder that trips like this are rarely funded by one business alone. It’s a collective effort, and every sponsor’s share matters to the total the club has to raise.
Saltair has been manufacturing modular buildings out of Coolum and Brisbane for more than a decade, and its values - safety, quality, integrity, sustainability and teamwork - extend past the factory floor. Teamwork, in particular, is easy to recognise on a rugby field. Backing a junior club’s tour is a small-scale version of what the company does on its larger projects: showing up, doing the practical thing, and helping something real get built - in this case, an experience a group of teenagers will remember for years.
For a business that’s 100% Australian owned and privately held, this kind of sponsorship also reflects a simple, relationship-driven approach to being part of the local community - supporting the clubs, schools and organisations that make the Sunshine Coast what it is, not just the projects that carry the company’s name.
For a club like Peregian Saints, described on its own website as self-funded and independent, sponsorship isn’t a nice-to-have - it’s what makes tours, kit and facilities possible in the first place. A tour like the Fiji trip involves flights, resort accommodation, ground transport, insurance and match fees for an entire squad, on top of the coaching and administration that goes into running the trip safely. Local sponsorship is what turns that from a wish list into a reality for families who’d otherwise be covering the full cost themselves.
Frequently asked questions
Most businesses look for a genuine connection - a shared community, staff or clients with kids in the club, or a sector tie-in. For Saltair, junior sport and community organisations sit alongside the residential, tourism and social housing sectors it already works in, so supporting a local rugby club is a natural extension of where the business already operates.
It depends on the tier and the club’s needs. For a tour like this one, it typically goes toward flights, accommodation, ground transport and insurance for the travelling squad. For a regular season, sponsorship more often covers playing kit, equipment and facility costs - the things a self-funded club can’t cover from registration fees alone.
Most clubs, including Peregian Saints, run a straightforward application process - usually a short form outlining what the sponsorship would fund and what the club can offer in return (signage, social media mentions, event access). Clubs looking for support are best placed reaching out directly to businesses with a genuine local connection.
Every club, and every partnership, is different
What a club needs and what a sponsorship can practically fund, depends on the club, the season and the scale of what’s being planned. The Peregian Saints’ Fiji tour is one example of how that support can play out, but the shape of it will look different for the next club or the next season. If your organisation is exploring a community partnership, or you’d simply like to know more about how Saltair works with the communities it builds in, the team is happy to talk it through.