Northland teammates score invitation for Fiji free for all

A weekend of disappointment led to delight for Northland Sevens skipper Rhys Te Nana and teammate Matt Harrison when the pair were included in the Aotearoa Maori Sevens side.
Te Nana and Harrison will join the invitational team and compete at the inaugural Uprising Fiji International Sevens Tournament at TFL National Stadium in Suva, Fiji on January 21 and 22.
"I got a phone call from Buck Shelford [team manager] on Monday night to say I was in the team and to come down to training at North Harbour on Wednesday ... because we were off to Fiji next week. I'm over the moon," Te Nana said.
The 21-year-old electrician captained the Northland Sevens team at the National Pub Charity Sevens Tournament in Queenstown last weekend. His side failed to achieve their goal of making the top eight, managing only one win from five games.
"It was a disappointing end to a hard couple of months training, to not get the result we wanted ... but it was a good experience and you always learn something new at these tournaments," the sevens prop said.
It was Te Nana's second year in the Northland squad, and he said the competition between provincial teams had intensified over the past 12 months.
"It was a lot better competition than last year - everyone seems to be getting better and faster. With sevens becoming an Olympic sport, everyone is pushing harder to get a spot in the New Zealand team."
Te Nana had a solid season last year playing flanker for his Moerewa 15-a-side team, and for the Northland Development squad before switching his focus to sevens, while Harrison, a No8, was a joint winner of the MVP Award for the Development team in 2010 after a stellar representative season.
While he was confident the pair's fitness would be adequate for the tournament, Te Nana admitted his nerves were a bit scratchy ahead of playing in the invitational side.
"I'm definitely nervous about this tournament because I don't really know what to expect ... I am thinking there will be some big, physical boys over there and that the competition will be somewhat similar to our one here. We have a lot of Fijian boys in the competition here so we know how they play," he said.
Te Nana and Harrison will assemble with the Matua Parkinson-coached side, before flying out to Suva on Tuesday where the team will go into camp and acclimatise for three days.
Team manager Wayne "Buck" Shelford said it will not be an easy tournament to play at with the Fijian, Tongan, Samoa and Australian Sevens sides using it as a warm-up ahead of next month's IRB World Series Wellington Sevens.
There are also invitational teams from various countries taking part in the two-day tournament along with Fijian village teams.
"We were asked to take a Maori selection because the NZ Sevens team were not going. There are quite a lot of players unavailable due to pre-season Super 15 training and other commitments, so we have assembled the most competitive team we could," Shelford said.