For just the third time in their teams history, The Cook Islands’ Women’s Rugby League squad have qualified for the Rugby League World Cup, and are feeling confident in their chances this November.
Their Coach Anthony ‘Rusty’ Tamati-Matua believes he can give them the support they need to make an impact on this world cup. The Cook Islands struggled in the last RLWC hosted in Australia, losing to New Zealand, Australia and England Respectively, missing out on the Semi-finals.
It was a quick turn-around for the team as they have only had 3 days to meet the squad and start training In Fact newcomer Erika Dean only found out she had made the squad 2 weeks before the tournament is set to kick off in November.
“We’re not that prepared if i’m honest, i only found out 2 weeks before that i made this team, so i started training really hard in that time.”
‘Nothing to lose‘
The team played a warm up match this afternoon against England Knights, in which they won 26-14 against a strong opposition, a huge confidence boost for the Moanas. When asked about how far her team can go in this tournament, Erika, who plays hooker, was confident in her team’s chances.
“We can go all the way, i think if we keep it up and work that much harder we can go far in this competition”
This confidence is echoed by their, who is happy with their position as the underdogs of this tournament. “I think it’s an advantage being underdogs because all the expectation is on our opposition, we’ve got nothing to lose but everything to gain”
Cook Islands Kick off their campaign against Australia, the highest rated team in the competition on November 2nd at Headingley Stadium.
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