26 Nov 2015

Sport: Cook Islands women's 7s in race against time

12:57 pm on 26 November 2015

The Cook Islands women's sevens team faces a race against time to prepare for the final Olympic qualifying event.

The Matt Atiga coached team impressed at the Oceania Sevens Championship earlier this month, finishing third behind Fiji and Samoa.

The Cook Islands finished third at the Oceania Sevens Championship.

The Cook Islands finished third at the Oceania Sevens Championship. Photo: RNZI

That was enough to secure a spot at next year's final Olympic repechage, from which the winner will advance to Rio.

The final qualifier was expected to be held in June but the Chief Executive of the Cook Islands Rugby Union, Ben Koteka, says their understanding is it will be a lot sooner.

"The dates that we've given the tournament will be held in February in Monaco. We're just waiting for those actual dates to be reconfirmed but obviously working backwards from those dates it's about ten weeks out so we have to work even harder now to make sure we can put our team in the best possible position to qualify for the Olympics. [We have to] just work with whatever resources that we can and best prepare our team for targeting that Monaco tournament".

Ben Koteka says at this stage the Cook Islands team have no tournaments scheduled before the proposed repechage.