The Papua New Guinea women's sevens team remains committed to contesting next month's Olympic repechage tournament in Monaco, despite the Covid-19 situation in Port Moresby affecting their preparation.
PNG last competed in a major tournament in 2019. Photo: Mike Lee - KLC fotos for World Rugby
The Palais have not played since three training matches against Australia 15 months ago but head coach Paul Tietjens said 18 players have been continued to train together in Port Moresby.
"They've been training Monday, Wednesday, Fridays with a strength and conditioning trainer in Port Moresby and those sessions remain around their strength, power, speed and their conditioning as well," he said.
"So they've been maintaining their levels and playing a little bit of club footy, but obviously, recently the cases have been quite bad in Papua New Guinea so they've been in some form of lockdown."
Tietjens remained stuck in New Zealand because of Covid-19 travel restrictions but has weekly Zoom meetings with his management team and keeps in contact with the players via Whatsapp.
The PNG men's sevens coach, Frank Gabi, has also stepped in to help as a local assistant coach on the ground.
"Due to the restrictions that Port Moresby and Papua New Guinea have in place at the moment it's actually quite tough for me to get over there...so at this stage I and my other management will be linking up with them in Monaco, otherwise potentially Australia before heading off to Monaco."
Some of the PNG players have already been vaccinated against the coronavirus and Tietjens said the rest of the squad might have to follow suit if they want to go to Monaco.
Paul Tietjens gets his message across during the Oceania Sevens. Photo: Supplied
"There's some that are still making decisions around if they would like the vaccine or not," he said.
"But I do know that the Olympic Committee in Papua New Guinea they're really trying to push for athletes to get the vaccination, purely because they might not be able to leave the country if they don't get the vaccinations, that's one of the questions marks that's over at the moment."
Papua New Guinea are top-ranked team in their pool at the repechage tournament, ahead of Kazakhstan, Jamaica and Tunisia.
"The only side I actually know alot about is Kazakhstan," Tietjens admitted.
"I know they were top three in the Asian qualifiers so they will definitely be very challenging and no doubt Jamaica and Tunisia will have some strong athletes as well but taking it one game at a time is the most important thing."
With 12 women's teams competing for two qualifying spots, what chance do PNG give themselves of going all the way to Tokyo?
"The two big sides there, the professional teams of France and Russia are definitely the ones to knock over but there's big opportunities there to qualify in the top two and anything can happen on any given day in sevens," Tietjens said.
"It's just going to be whether the girls front and if they can get over there in the best preparation possible."