Pukpuks eye HK 7s

By HUXLEY LOVAI

THE Papua New Guinea 7s team have been hard at training over the last couple of weeks as they gear up for the challenging Hong Kong leg of the HSBC 7s World Series.
The Hong Kong tournament offers PNG a golden opportunity to qualify as a core nation in the 7s world series, as it doubles as a qualification competition to determine the final roster of nations to take part in the full 7s circuit in the 2017/18 season.
Preparations for the Pukpuks have not been ideal, with the team enduring a long break without any competitive matches since the Sydney 7s tournament last month (Feb 4-5).
Pukpuk 7s coach Douglas Guise told The National that the main challenge for the squad was to regain their match fitness levels.
“I’d say we are close to a month behind with our training programmes. It’s been tough trying to get the men back into the grove all of a sudden over the last week or so.  But they have pushed themselves hard,” Guise said
The Pukpuk 7s team were fortunate eto play in back-to-back tournaments in the HSBC 7s World Series this year, playing in Wellington (Jan 28-29) and Sydney (Feb 4-5).
Both outings proved to be a steep learning curve for the team as they got a taste of the highly-competitive nature of rugby 7s at the elite level.
“Going into Wellington, we always knew it was going to be a struggle coming up against top-tier nations, being the only non-core team participating.
“We were not expecting miracles, but we were just trying to work out if our systems actually worked.
“In Sydney, I thought the men put in a much-improved performance.
“We should have at least come away with two or three wins in Sydney,” Guise said.
“It was good to get the big game match experience from both tournaments.”