ANZ Marama Cup: Emerging 15-year Olds in Naitasiri Under 20 Women’s Team
Naitasiri Under 20 women’s team is laced with some emerging young players with two of them aged 15 and are still in school.
Today our team caught-up with these development players who had a taste of provincial rugby when their team met Suva at Bidesi Park providing these two youngsters a chance to be brave in attack and defence against their much older opponents during the scheduled ANZ Marama Cup match.
Year 10 student of Assembly of God (AOG), Merewalesi Rokovalagi, has been playing rugby from primary school and continued to develop herself through the Weetbix Raluve secondary school girls competition.
Rokovalagi who prefers to play at locks is a player to watch as she develops with the Naitisiri Women’s Under 20 team which also has 17- and 18-year-old players in its ranks.
The other 15-year-old, Amalaini Seuraki, who hails from Viria Naitasiri with maternal links to Kadavu started playing rugby this year, says she’s enjoying playing rugby especially playing at wing for the development Naitasiri women’s team.
The shy year-10 student of Dilkusha High School who just started playing rugby last year for her school says she aspires to become a soldier after school and continue with developing her skills in the sport.
Both Rokovalagi and Seuraki had an interest to play for their respective teams that were registered for the recent Fiji Bitter 7s competition but shared how they were told to sit the competition out as they were below the age of 18; the rules of the competition does not allow players under 18yrs old to participate.
Naitasiri Women’s Under 20 manager, Jolame Ratu, believes their match against their strong opponents from the capital city was good exposure for their team that has a range of young players between 15 to 20.
Ratu says this is part of their development plan for the next 4 years and they expect to see some good results as they see this team through to 2028 with the emerging players playing at the right age of 20 in the not-so-distant future.
The Naitasiri team currently sits on 3rd place (23 points) on the ANZ Marama Cup Championship behind Nadi (28 points) and Suva (30 points) respectively.