Tough battle for NZ Defence Force

Both the men’s and women’s New Zealand Defence Force Rugby league teams finished last without a win at the World Cup in Sydney last week.

The New Zealand men’s team lost 36-18 to United Kindgom Defence Force in their playoff for last place.

In their pool games, New Zealand lost to the United Kingdom 40-30 in their closest game of the tournament, and lost to Fiji 40-6 and Australia 64-8.

Fiji claimed their first Defence Force World Cup title when they beat Australia 44-12.

Handling errors from Australia had them trailing 22-6 at halftime and they couldn’t stop Fiji’s attack in the second half.

There were seven Manawatu players in the New Zealand team in Linton Cobras players Nikolao Ioane, Logan Afoa, Tevita Faukafa and Graham Merriman, as well as Ohakea Magpies Matthew Cole, Hayden Gouman Whiteman.

In the women’s competition, Australia came out on top of their three-game series against New Zealand.

Australia won the first match 40-6, then beat the Kiwis again in the second game, 48-26.

The third game was supposed to be a final, but the series was already decided. Australia sealed a 3-0 series win with a 16-12 victory in the last game.

There were 10 players from Linton in the New Zealand team in Makenzie Mckay, Ruci Malanicagi, Briya Brown, Sammy Mcintosh, Ricki-lee Rawleigh, Ruth Tietie, Arihi Reihana, Molly Lincoln, Morgan Findlay and Katie Steele.

Linton’s John Tuala was the coach.

There was also Manawatu’s Wairakau Greig, who is now based at Woodbourne with the air force, and Gina Reilly, who is from Auckland, but has just been posted to Linton. and Ryan