Six players from the Oceania Women’s Rugby Combine will be selected for a scholarship program for Super W teams in Australia next year.

The team which is coached by Ireland women’s mentor Greg Williams is in the country preparing for its match against the Fijiana Development on Friday.

Oceania Combine features players from Papua New Guinea, Samoa, and Tonga.

Fiji is not included in this program as they’re already part of the Super W competition.

International Partnership Officer for Oceania Rugby, Koli Sewabu says this program is to create a high-performance pathway for women in the three Pacific nations.

“The objective of this is to identify the best athletes from the region specifically, Samoa, Tonga, and PNG. We bring them into this high-performance daily training environment and get them exposed to what high performance is all about. At the end of this week, six of the players will be selected to go into a scholarship program for Super W teams in Australia next year.”

Sewabu says present at the training are Brumbies women’s coach Scott Fava, Claudia Bell who is the Female High-Performance Pathways Manager for the Western Force and Melbourne Rebels coach Jason Rogers.

The idea is to have these women as agents of change when they return to their islands, sharing what they’ve learned from the program.

Super W teams including ACT Brumbies, Rebels, and Western Force will cater to the six women who will be selected after Friday’s match.

Friday’s match will kick off at 12 pm at Albert Park in Suva.