Texans on grassroots tour in Manawatu

The Texas Rattlesnakes will experience real New Zealand grassroots rugby when they come up against the Tararua Barbarians in Pahiatua tonight.

The Rattlesnakes are a United States university under-23 side, which is essentially a rep team made up of university players from across Texas, and they arrived in the country on Sunday ahead of their two-week tour.

One of their first stops is in Manawatu where they will play a country club in small town Pahiatua.

They are playing the Northern region under-18s Maori team in Hamilton on Monday and the Ponsonby colts team in Auckland next Wednesday, but their first game is against the Tararua Barbarians, which will be a combined team between Pahiatua club Bush and Pongaroa side Puketoi.

There are seven players from Puketoi and 17 from Bush and they had no shortage of players keen to have a crack at the American side.

The Rattlesnakes are coached by Darren Scott, who is originally from Pahiatua and went to Freyberg High School, but he is based in the United States now.

He helped organise the team to stop in Manawatu for a couple of days.

The Rattlesnakes trained at Freyberg yesterday afternoon, and were going to hold their captain’s run at Ballance School today.

The game is at Bush Multisport Park at 7pm and will be referred by former Black Fern and Manawatu player Rebecca Mahoney.

While in Wellington on Monday, the Rattlesnakes had a training session with club side Old Boys-university and had Hurricanes lock Mark Abbott, former All Blacks halfback Dave Loveridge and former New Zealand Maori midfielder Rua Tipoki all help out. While on their travels they may have training sessions with people like Mike Brewer, Ofisa Tonu’u and Darryl Suasua