Cook Islands have ‘nothing to lose and everything to gain’

Another World Cup provides a new opportunity for the Cook Islands women team.

The 2017 World Cup campaign saw them just miss out on qualifying for the semifinals after losing out to England on points difference.

Cook Island hooker Mireka Dean believes this World Cup gives the team the chance to redeem themselves and says the team has “learned from their mistakes.”

“Even just selecting the team was different to how it was in 2017 so I do think redemption is on the way in this round” she says.

Achieving redemption will be easier said than done with two of the world’s best teams in their group. Australia and New Zealand.

‘Our goal is to upset the big dogs’

Head Coach Anthony Matua believes there are two ways you can view their group.

“You can be looking at it as lambs to the slaughter or we can be thankful that it’s a blessing to be on the world stage, playing against the world number one and we tend to look at it optimistically as a blessing and we’re thankful for the opportunity” he said.

He added: “Our goal is to upset one of the big dogs. We have the toughest draw in the competition, world number one first and world number two second.”

Cook Island center Kinia Takairangi believes they are the underdogs within their group.

“There’s not much talk about us at the moment it’s all about those bigger nations but we’ve got nothing to lose and everything to gain so we’re doing all we can to make sure we put on a decent performance” she said.

The Cook Islands kick off their World Cup campaign when they play Australia at the LNER Community Stadium on November 2nd.