Cook Islands Moana captain Kiana Takairangi is hoping to inspire the next generation of players to represent their country and make their mark in rugby league’s top-level competitions.
Takairangi has recently returned from a visit to the nation where she took part in conducting junior clinics and a nines competition to help encourage local players engage with the sport, giving them a taste of what to expect if they want to push into pathways to the NRL, NRLW and international teams.
“We spent some time in Rarotonga, which is the main island of the Cook Islands, where we ran a clinic for kids aged between 6 and 12, before heading over to Aitutaki which is another one of the outer islands and we ran a rugby league nines tournament for the older kids, so that was 12- to 18-year-olds.”
Takairangi, who made history last year as part of the only brother and sister in any sporting code to be appointed as captain of their nation’s men’s and women’s teams at the same time alongside brother Brad, headed over with a crew of helpers – including Brad and good friend Corbyn Baxter from the Roosters – to facilitate the activities that she hopes will help build the playing base on the small island nation.
“It just started as an idea that Corbyn and I came up with; we coach at home (in Sydney), that's a business that we have coaching rugby league and speed and agility,” Takairangi said.
“We were over there for a holiday in 2019, and we saw how many kids there were that were running around and how happy they were, and we thought of how cool it would be to be able to take what we do at home over there and share that with the kids and give back to them a little bit.
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“That was three years ago now, we did our first rugby league clinic over there. It's all free for them and we go and just try to share our knowledge and experience with the next generation and try to inspire them and hopefully encourage some more of them to want to play rugby league and get involved … especially for the girls in particular.
“We'd love to see more players – for me, obviously I'm the Cook Islander, but Corb's a very supportive best friend, she's given me 100%, but we'd love to see more of our kids from the Cook Islands make it through to the top.
“We want to try to set up some sort of pathway for those kids to come through, especially with the older ones we had in Aitutaki.
“We ran that tournament in the memory of Troy Dargan, who recently passed away and there was so much talent there, both in the boys and the girls.”
Like many others with family links to the country, Takairangi is a member of the Cook Islands diaspora, having been born in Sydney, to a Cook Islander father and New Zealand mother. However, rugby league helped her connect with that part of her heritage and has helped spark the desire to give back.
“Growing up, I actually didn't have a lot of connection,” Takairangi said.
“I didn't know a lot about my heritage, but it was rugby league that got me involved and reconnected me with where I'm from.
“Since playing for the Cook Islands back in 2017 and experiencing what the top level is like and seeing that there's not many girls that are actually from the home islands that play … (and) seeing that the rest of us are from Sydney or around Australia or New Zealand, that kind of made me think ‘why aren't there more girls coming from home, from the islands’, sort of thing.
“So that was kind of where I was ‘we need to change this, we need to do something about it’ because for us to really compete at that top level, I feel like we need to be developing our players a lot better.”
Both the Moana and Aitu teams will once again feature in the Pacific Championships in the end of this season, with Takairangi – who is still in search of an NRLW opportunity and claimed South Sydney’s Player of the Year award for the Harvey Norman NSW Premiership 2024 season – keen to help build on the international level.
“Absolutely I'd love to continue to play, I feel like I've still got some good football left in me,” Takairangi said.
“I want to stay in that space because I think that we've got a lot of room for growth within our international teams. Definitely want to be involved. I love playing and representing my country.”
