PNG women for Sydney, Hong Kong

Papua New Guinea women’s team have qualified for the Women Sevens Series in Sydney and Hong Kong after finishing third in the Oceania 7s Championship. PNG won four games beating Cook Islands 12-5, Samoa 28-10, Solomon Islands 15-0 and Tonga 31-0, but lost to Fiji 54-0 and Australia 39-0. Sydney and Hong Kong are the only tournaments which allow invitational teams to participate. Coach John Larry said qualifying for the two tournaments is the icing on the cake. “This is the 10th year for women’s rugby back home and qualifying for Sydney and Hong Kong is a big boost,” Larry said.

“It was a great effort by the girls, they held their own. It has been really good and also been a huge learning curve for us.”

Only losing to Fiji and Australia Larry said, they really need to step up in training and build themselves up in order to be a tough competitor against dominating countries. “Finishing third in the Oceania is a big boost for us, we just need to provide more tough competition against Australia and Fiji,” he said.

“The girls need to get stronger, faster, fitter and more skilful. Judging from the girls performance at the Oceania 7s, we now know what we must do in order to step up in Hong Kong and Sydney. “We need to work on our discipline because that has cost us the game a lot of times, our support play is very important and these are things we are definitely going to work on when we go back home.” Edited by Osea Bola