Patea Warriors taking on Dannevirke Tigers in curtain-raiser for Warriors vs Sharks NRL match in Wellington

Te Omeka Abraham-Rio, Awatope Tule, Te Hau Hurunui-Diamond, Neilani Tamatea and Deijah Poutama will represent the Patea Warriors at Westpac Stadum in Wellington. Photo / Supplied

The Warriors are playing at Westpac Stadium in Wellington on Friday July 19 and they could not be more excited.

The Patea Warriors are taking on the Dannevirke Tigers in a curtain-raiser to the New Zealand Warriors NRL match against the Cronulla Sharks.

The under-7 and under-9 teams will be battling it out while the under-11 team and 200 supporters cheer them on.

Patea Rugby League Club chairman Tere Diamond said it was a once in a lifetime opportunity.

"We started the club at the start of this year and 90 per cent of the kids who came to play league didn't even know who the Warriors are," Diamond said.

"They couldn't name an NRL team, but over the space of about five months, they know who the Warriors are, they know some of the players and they're excited."

Diamond was born and bred in Auckland. Along with his wife Te Ruinga and their children, they made the move down to South Taranaki last year.

The Diamond's are a rugby league family, but after a period of time travelling to Hawera twice a week so the children could play and train, enough was enough.

They put their heads together, put in the work and started a team in Patea for the first time in 25 years.

Diamond said it has been very challenging and it was a shock to the system when majority of the players did not know the rules.

"We spent the first six weeks teaching them how to play rugby league. The first half of the season, majority of our teams got an absolute hiding from the other clubs," he said.

"However, we had the festival day on the weekend and got lots of feedback from other coaches about how far our kids have come. That was the highlight for me."

The financial side of things was another hurdle the club had to jump, but they were able to do that through fundraising efforts and selling merchandise.

These were also big factors in raising funds for the trip to Wellington, as well as a Local Discretionary Fund for Patea available via the South Taranaki District Council.

Diamond had booked accommodation, arranged travel and numbers, when another huge opportunity was presented to him.

"We'd finalised everything, but then we got invited by the Warriors to attend a skills and drills training on the Thursday. That changed everything," he said.

"A lot of parents were going to take their kids down themselves because they didn't want to miss that opportunity.

"We went back to the drawing board, looked for new funds, found new accommodation and managed to get us down there from Thursday until Saturday."

The Patea Warriors play in the Taranaki Junior Rugby League competition with seven other clubs.

With the season done and dusted, they will train one more time before the biggest game of their young careers.

"For some of these kids it might be the first and last time they get to play at a Warriors game, but even possibly go to a Warriors game," Diamond said.

"At the end of the day if they go out and have fun, that's the main thing."