Football: Tayla gets international tour call-up

Tauranga Girls' College midfielder Tayla Forward will tour Thailand with the New Zealand Secondary Schools team in July.

Tayla Forward's goal of playing football for New Zealand will soon become a reality.

The Tauranga Girls' College Year 13 student will tour Thailand with the NZ Secondary Schools team in July. They play four games including two against the Thailand national schools team.

The selection was a surprise to Forward, 17, despite her consistent performances over five years in the Tauranga Girls' First XI at regional and national tournaments.

"I am stoked. I have always been going towards this goal," she said. "You know you start as a little kid and you run around and think you quite like this. But this one really came out of nowhere. There was no sort of selection process so it popped up out of the blue.

"I didn't even know [the tour] existed so it was not something I had been aiming for. It just sort of happened. I will go wherever football takes me at the moment."

NZ Secondary Schools head coach Gareth Turnball said he took notice of Forward at last year's nationals in Taupo when Tauranga Girls' finished in the top four schools.

"Tayla was one of the standouts. I had not seen her before on the New Zealand radar," he said.

"She fitted the criteria we were looking for of a Year 12 or 13 high-performing athlete who has the potential to go on and represent her country at age-group level as well.

"Her physicality and ability to impose herself on the opposition are her strengths and that comes from playing that defensive midfield role. She is technically very good.

"She is now identified in the scheme of things for the Under-20 World Cup squad next year. She has been brought into a New Zealand programme called Taps [Talent Acceleration Pathway] that I lead which is one session a week she will have with other girls from the greater Bay area."

Forward said girls' football had been on a roll for a few seasons, but the impetus was building with New Zealand qualifying for next month's Fifa Women's World Cup in Canada.

"Women's football is definitely on the rise nationally so I guess that implies that Tauranga must be going with it. Over my five years here at school, I have definitely seen an improvement for sure."