Two Wairarapa youngsters have taken a big step towards fulfilling their dream of representing New Zealand on the international football stage.
Emily Morison, 13, and Liam Hare, 14, have been accepted into the National Talent Centre where they will receive specialised tuition from some of the country's highest-profile coaches at a series of training camps, the first of them in the Hutt over Easter weekend.
Morison and Hare were two of a number of Wairarapa juniors nominated from this region's own talent centre for the NTC and they are the very first from there to have been given the final nod.
Their selection was labelled a "huge thrill" by Capital Football's development officer for Wairarapa, Juan Propato, not only for the two players themselves but for Wairarapa football as a whole.
"You often hear people say that the better players from here have to go to the bigger centres to make something like the NTC, that there isn't a pathway for them from places like the Wairarapa," said Propato.