Sevens: Cooks side take on Bay flavour

Rotorua based Junior Taia has been pegged as a young player going places in the Cook Islands Sevens set-up. Photo / Supplied

Slowly but surely the Cook Islands Sevens side is starting to develop a real Bay of Plenty flavour.

Former All Blacks Sevens players Chad Tuoro and Hayden Reid are on board as coach and assistant coach respectively, and they have called in 20-year-old Junior Taia - one of Rotorua's most promising young players - in a bid to build a youthful combination capable of qualifying for the pinnacle events of the Sevens world.

"I coach the Sevens team in a voluntary role - it's not a paid role - so I've been able to, as part of the union's Sevens strategy and trying to build relationships with clients, coach the Cook Islands for the past year," Tuoro said.

The former Counties Manukau and Bay of Plenty player was asked to manage the team for the 2012 Oceania and 2013 Hong Kong tournaments before taking over the reins last year after the former head coach resigned.

The Bay of Plenty Rugby Union player development manager is back home this week after taking a Cook Islands side, without its seven most experienced players due to either work commitments or injury, to seventh place at the Oceania 7s in Noosa, Australia.

The team, with an average age of 22, lost to Tonga in the plate semifinal before finishing seventh, meaning they did not qualify for either of next year's IRB Sevens World Sevens tournaments in Wellington or Hong Kong after featuring at both the Glasgow Commonwealth Games and Hong Kong Sevens this year.

Tuoro sees the side's placing in Noosa as disappointing - especially since the island nation recorded its best ever placing at the Commonwealth Games this year.