Two Northlanders are swapping their allegiance from the top of the North Island to the top of the South Island for next weekend's Wheelchair Basketball National Championships in Wellington.
Derek Donker and Brent Lynn were unable to organise a Northland team in time for the nationals this year but werelucky enough to be invited to join the Nelson team for the competition.
"It was hard to organise a team this year because we left training until May which was too late and there just aren't enough players around at the moment," Donker said.
Money is always a challenge for travelling sports teams and that proved a major hurdle for the Northland players.
"It was going to cost $8000 to send all our equipment down - so that put people off - so we flagged it this year but we'll definitely try again next year," Donker said.
He said while it was sad Northland would not be represented at the nationals, there were a couple of silver linings to that particular cloud.
One of the bonuses for the pair is that the Nelson coach is also the national coach.
For Donker, who is looking to make an impression at his first national tournament and Lynn, who has already been selected into the New Zealand development team for Rio in four years, it will be a good opportunity to show what they've got.
The other bonus is that they are motivated to make Northland a threat next year and have already started planning.
"We'll be more motivated when we get back. We want to hold some clinics up north because there are guys up north who want to play but it's too far for them to come down to Whangarei all the time," he said.
