Cooks on track for Hong Kong

The Cook Islands rugby sevens team is keen to emulate last year’s feat in the Oceania 7s Championship and qualify for next year’s Hong Kong 7s tournament.

The Chad Tuoro-coached side made a good start to their campaign in the 2013 Oceania 7s at the ANZ Stadium in Suva yesterday (Friday), finishing second in Pool B.

The side defeated Papua New Guinea 14-10 in its opening pool match before getting hammered by the Digicel Fiji team 0-41.

In its final pool match, Cook Islands defeated Tuvalu 28-10 to remain in frame of finishing high in the tournament, which ends today (Saturday).

Coach Tuoro applauded his player’s effort.

“We are happy with that performance and with the second place finish in our pool,” he said.

“We qualified through Oceania last year to play in the Hong Kong 7s this year and the aim is to qualify for Hong Kong 7s again next year but then hopefully finish as high as we can to get a place in the Commonwealth Games.”

The Oceania 7s allows the top two placed non-core teams, which excludes Fiji, Australia and Samoa, an entry to next year’s Hong Kong 7s, including the opportunity later to qualify for the main HSBC Sevens World Series.

Tuoro said they were on track of achieving their goal of becoming one of the core 7s nations as the game was gaining popularity in the Cook Islands.

However he added they had to resort to their experienced players who were based overseas particularly in New Zealand and Australia which gave them less time to prepare for international tournaments.