The Cook Islands men’s sevens team plans to implement a series of initiatives this year to become competitive at international tournaments.

The Clive Nicholas-coached side competed at the Oceania 7s tournament in the Solomon Islands in December 2024, finishing in sixth place – an improvement of two places compared to their 2023 tournament result.

Team manager Simon Iopu Johnston told Cook Islands News about some of the initiatives they would be implementing this year to ensure better results.

“For starters, relationships will be essential. We must recalibrate and strengthen our working relationships with Cook Islands rugby bodies in New Zealand and Australia,” Johnston said.

He was overseas in December and had planned to use some of that time to reach out to some of his contacts and develop an agreeable working plan.

“It’s essential that we all work together or risk further segregation, which only hurts the players.”

Locally, Johnston said they needed to innovate. This includes the launch of a new Cook Islands 7s high performance programme led by head coach Nicholas “which is essentially a face-to-face training model that preps players for meaningful competition throughout the year”.

“Players will be called into specially allotted 1–2-day mini camps and at these camps we will gain vital data into player welfare, strength and conditioning. This will also be a great opportunity for the coaching group to top up team game plan IQ, fitness and skill level to match the game plan,” Johnston said.

“On the flipside, the player will walk away with personal work on’s with KPI (key performance indicator) targets in preparation for the next camp. The players will be fully kitted throughout the camp and hopefully have an experience that will compel them to continue as an elite level player in the Cook Islands.”

Johnston said the national team also needed to attend better competitions “or risk some of these teams surpassing us in the coming years, as we’ve seen with Tuvalu who now base their lead up programme in Fiji”.

“That has a financial costing to it and will be a work on for the coming months,” he said.

“It’s exciting times and with a growth mindset we can achieve massive improvements in every aspect of the programme.”