Palais sets sights on Shanghai sevens tournament

 THE Papua New Guinea Palais returned from the Oceania Women’s Sevens Championships yesterday without the results they had hoped for.

The Oceania Women’s sevens championships held over the weekend in Noosa, Australia, saw the Palais thrashed 48-0 by world  champions New Zealand  in the opening match.

It was a five-nation s tournament where PNG had to at least win one game out of four to make the top four and play in the finals.

Samoa came back strong in the second game to draw with PNG 7-7.

PNG had a couple of chances of scoring against Samoa but failed to take the right options.

Palais classy sweeper Yarowena Morofa’s only converted try managed to put PNG on track. In the third and fourth rounds, Australia thrashed PNG 48-0 and Fiji ran over them 52-0 in the last round of pool matches.

Samoa lost to New Zealand 43-0 and went down to Australia 40-5, which saw PNG get eliminated.

However, despite having no reserves throughout the tournament, the PNG girls managed to complete all four games without any complaints.

The seven whose visas had been approved left on Thursday, with the rest of the team remaining because of their late visas.

Assistant coach Cecil Davani said he could not have asked for more from the seven players who had been exhausted in their last game against Fiji.

The girls said despite the situation being a big letdown for the team, they gave their best in trying to put PNG rugby on top by playing right through to the last game without having a full team with them.

“Let it be an experience to learn from and now we look forward towards the Shanghai Sevens tournament in China from October 26-27,” Morofa said.