Northland coach finds young talent for national showdown

The Northland Sevens rugby tournament provided some fast-flowing entertainment but for Northland selectors it was more about unearthing talent for the national sevens competition in the coming years.
Hikurangi overcame Hora Hora in an exciting but eventually one-sided final at Old Boys on Saturday, with the red and blacks undermining their opponents with better tactics and structure as the game progressed.
"They had quite a few experienced sevens players in their team and they were well organised and that proved enough in the end," Northland sevens coach JT Thomas said.
He is expecting several of the successful Hikurangi team to turn out for Northland training on Tuesday as the representative team begins its build-up towards the national sevens tournament in Queenstown in the second week of January - but he has also invited plenty of new faces who stood out at Saturday's tournament.
"We've got three weekends of build-up competitions before Christmas, so hopefully we'll have enough players interested to run two solid teams at training ... because a sheer weight of numbers pushing for positions makes the boys know they have to do the work they need to, so hopefully we'll have some of these young guys pushing some of the more experienced players for their positions," he said.
And Thomas said that even if the young faces don't make it into the travelling side this year, they will gain valuable experience and would be more likely to succeed next year.
"It's almost a young man's game these days and I'm hoping that the typical Northland attitude to the summer won't put off the players from coming along to training and we get a good turnout on Tuesday at our first training."
It was the first time the Northland tournament was run in November to give selectors a chance to see prospective talent in action before the national sevens tournament - with the event formerly run in February as a pre-season club rugby event. Fifteen of the 16 tournament spots were filled.
"The most pleasing thing for me was to see so many young players coming through, Moerewa turned up with an exciting young side and I asked four of their players to come along to train ... and two of them had the last name Te Nana, so you'd think they'd have the right breeding for sevens," Thomas said in reference to former New Zealand Sevens star Karl Te Nana.
Wellsford beat Mid-Northern in the Plate final, while Kamo were too strong for Whangaruru in the Bowl competition.
And Tomarata were rewarded for their late entry with a win over Waipu to win the Cup competition.