Te Puke bank on international flavour

A Fijian, a Canadian, a Samoan, a Tongan, an Englishman and a Japanese man all walk into a rugby club.
It makes for a great start to a joke - fortunately for Te Puke Sports, it also makes for a large chunk of their Baywide club rugby aspirations as well.
Te Puke's United Nations approach to the club season has already paid dividends and they're about to get their first international representative out of it.
Canadian rugby sevens star Brodie Henderson, who joined the team late last week and scored two tries in a 20 minute cameo against Kawerau, is about to get the callup to the Canadian national team for their Super Powers' Cup tournament in Japan next month.
"I knew New Zealand was the heart of rugby and I wanted to come down and play somewhere," Henderson said.
"I want to improve everything about my game. I haven't been playing all that long and I want to learn everything.
"Coming to New Zealand, you sleep, eat and breathe rugby so there's no better spot to learn it all."
The 21-year-old will start tomorrow against Rotoiti, while Japanese centre Kenji Kamimoto will also be in the mix.
Kamimoto has come out from the Kobe Steel club, where Te Puke stalwart Andy Miller spent a long and rewarding career.
Tongan Toutai Telefoni is a recent addition to the club, while second-five PJ Gidlow, a Samoan, has been with the club for several seasons.
Te Puke is also awaiting the arrival of a new Bay of Plenty signing, Fijian wing Filimone Bolavucu, who has been lured here from Waikato.
The 24-year-old has played the last three seasons for the Fijian sevens team and is a former Fijian Colt.
Finally, last year's skipper Dan Goodwin is still finishing hisoff-season in England, but when he returns next month, he's bringing back a promising young English lock to fill that void in theside.
The international presence is gratefully received by coach Rodney Gibbs, who has struggled with three players - props Ben Castle and Simms Davison and lock Mark Sorenson - on Chiefs duty and wing Charles Baxter involved with the New Zealand sevens side.
"When we're in dire straits, we'll take anything we can get hold of!" Gibbs laughed.
"They're all good boys and they all get along well - it definitely adds to the culture in the club.'
Henderson, meanwhile, has had a meteoric rise in rugby, after spending the first 20 years of his life immersed in ice hockey and soccer.
He played for the Canadian under-21 soccer team and played junior professional ice hockey in Ohio before giving rugby a blast early last year.
Within months, he'd moved from his home-town Chilliwack Blues team just outside Vancouver to the British Columbian premier division Abbotsford team and from there was selected into the national sevens team in October.
He made his debut in the Dubai tournament last year and was hooked.
"I got into the last three minutes of the first game in Dubai against the All Blacks (New Zealand) and that was unreal," Henderson said.
"The stands were packed and everyone was yelling and I was tackling All Blacks. I never ever thought that was going to happen."
Henderson was also a high school track star, and within hours of getting off the plane in New Zealand had run a 4.8sec 40m in Bay of Plenty fitness testing, despite feeling under the weather and suffering jetlag.
Te Puke are fifth on the Baywide table and face a stinging Rotoiti side that lost its unbeaten record to Rangiuru last week.
Rangiuru travel to Tauranga Sports, while Rangataua, who are again without Jason Hona after he was called into the New Zealand sevens team playing in Singapore, host Mount Maunganui.
In other games, Kawerau host Waikite, Te Puna travel to Whakatane and Kahukura and Whakarewarewa clash in the Rotorua derby.