The visiting Te Tai Tokerau Natives club from New Zealand will play two matches against the Cook Islands select teams in preparation for this weekend’s Raro 7s tournament.

The Cook Islands U16 Men’s team will take on Te Tai Tokerau Natives in a 15s clash at the National Stadium in Nikao this afternoon. The match will kick off at 2pm followed by the Women’s U18 Rarotonga versus Te Tai Tokerau Natives U18 at 5pm.

Te Tai Tokerau Natives U18 women’s side is coached by organiser and advocate Rana Paraha and their U16 team is coached by Justice Karena. The club has brought 20 male and 22 female players for the 15s and 7s matches.

Paraha said their clash against the Rarotonga U18 team is their priority. She said they started training about six months ago.

“They come off the gravel roads ... they’ve got like one or two hours just to get to training. So this is an opportunity for these kids to come and play an international game of a sport that they love, which is rugby.”

Paraha said that because of the vast distance apart for all of them to get together they had hub training for each district in the Northland province in Auckland.

“They're really excited, they have been looking forward to this so they’ve done a lot of preparation, mental preparation, physical preparation for themselves. They know how hot it is over here and we needed to be able to condition our body to be able to handle the heat.”

Paraha said they had a team in the past competing at the Raro 7s adding they were looking forward to this weekend’s tournament.

The two-day annual tournament will kick off on Friday at the National Stadium.