HAMISH BIDWELL
Ngati Kahungunu will be without Sydney Roosters stars Kererua and Troy Savage at the Maori Rugby League national tournament in Rotorua this weekend.
The pair had turned down the chance to play for the New South Wales Maori team that beat Kahungunu in last year's final, preferring to play alongside
their old Hawke's Bay teammates. But while the brothers will be making the trip north with the squad, neither will be able to play.
"The Roosters wouldn't give Troy a clearance to play and while he said he still wanted to play regardless, I don't want to put him in a position where he might blow all the good work that he's done over there this year," said Kahungunu coach Alan Mason.
"Kererua broke his arm about six weeks and it hasn't mended right, so we've had to leave him out."
In an effort to bolster the side that will be captained by regular Watties Unicorns skipper Terry Nikora, Mason has brought in Hibiscus Coast Bartercard Cup player Sonny Cavanagh and two of the youngsters he coached in the New Zealand Maori under-18 team, Tera Cooper and Ken Edwards, both of Manawatu.
Otherwise it's much the same squad that did so well last year. So does Mason feel any pressure to emulate that effort?
"Not really," he said.
"We won't know who we're up against until we get there, so everyone's an unknown and it's just a matter of which team turns up on the day wanting to win. We've been training to play wet-weather football all week and if we can control our possession then we'll go okay.
"Certainly there's a good feeling in the team after what happened last year. If you take into account the overall performance of the Hawke's Bay rep team, what we did at the Maori tournament just topped that off and it was a shame we couldn't put the cream on top of that in the final, but that's footy and we still did extremely well."
Mason says the most notable achievement of last year's team was the number of players who used the tournament as a stepping stone to contracts with NRL clubs.
"If you look at my team from last year, five of my guys from the Maori team got themselves contracts - two with the Newtown Jets, who are a feeder club to the NRL, and three with the Roosters.
"There's plenty of opportunity for these young guys to step up to another level and for those that have aspirations of a professional career, there's plenty of scouts who will be on hand at the national tournament. As I said, we have five guys picked up after last year's tournament and if that's not incentive enough for the players to perform, then I don't know what is."
HAMISH BIDWELL
Ngati Kahungunu will be without Sydney Roosters stars Kererua and Troy Savage at the Maori Rugby League national tournament in Rotorua this weekend.
The pair had turned down the chance to play for the New South Wales Maori team that beat Kahungunu in last year's final, preferring to play alongside
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