Three Dunghutti players represented Indigenous Australia in the Oceania Cup Oztag competition in New Zealand last weekend.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Whitney Smith, Malika Moylan and David Davis were part of the bronze medal winning Senior Mixed team, which also included Kempsey resident and Biripi woman Ash Moorehead.
The team comprised of players from North Queensland, Brisbane, Tamworth, Central Coast and Sydney as well as the strong Kempsey/Port Macquarie contingent.
In all, the team played nine games against New Zealand, NZ Maori, American Samoa, Samoa, Cook Islands, Niue and Tahiti.
In the round games, the Indigenous Australia team won four, lost two and drew one game.
The team only got together for the first team on the day before the competition and after a slow start, the team finished the tournament full of running to qualify for the semi-finals.
In the semi-final, Indigenous Australia were up against the top seeded New Zealand national team.
Indigenous Australia were confident of causing an upset after narrowly going down in the final minutes to the slick New Zealand team in the second last of the round games.
After a fast start, Indigenous Australia were up 5-2 but unfortunately it was a case of history repeating as New Zealand were through to the gold medal game with a 7-6 victory right on the full-time siren, in which was later described as the game of the tournament.
In the bronze medal playoff against NZ Maori, the Indigenous team bounced back to put on an exciting brand of Oztag and defeated NZ Maori 10-2.
New Zealand went on to win the gold medal game comfortably against American Samoa.
The local players will be in action again in March representing Port Macquarie Oztag in the State Cup competition to be held in Coffs Harbour.