Transcript
It's been a big month for the Fiji women's rugby league team.
Four weeks ago they made their international debut, thrashing the Papua New Guinea Orchids 28-0 in Sydney.
Two weeks ago they won a gold medal at the Pacific Games, in the inaugural women's rugby league nines competition.
But when the eight teams to contest the 2021 Women's Rugby League World Cup were announced on Thursday via Twitter Fiji was nowhere to be seen.
Head coach Adrian Vowles firmly believes Fiji is a top four side and is gutted they will not be involved.
"Not for me, but for the ladies and we all found out via social media as well and it was disappointing to find out that way. Disappointing to hear it because we had a very good team that, come 2021, in my opinion would have been in contention at having a good old crack at winning it."
Adrian Vowles says the past month has created some real momentum for the sport in a country where traditionally rugby union reined supreme.
But he fears their World Cup snub will undo all that hard work.
"Players now want to play for Fiji, young and experienced ones. It has been amazing since that test win and this is a bit of a stop sign - like it has stopped the momentum."
PNG Orchids head coach Nigel Hukula is thrilled his side will feature in England but admits he was stunned to discover Fiji had been overlooked.
"Actually I had to take a double-take to see that the list I saw was actually the list I saw because I thought after Fiji's performance against us they were definitely going to be a part of the World Cup, so I was a bit taken back to be honest."
Applications for five of the eight World Cup slots were opened up with three being set aside for Australia and New Zealand as the top two sides and England as hosts.
Brazil and France are the only new nations to make the cut for 2021, while PNG, the Cook Islands and Canada all featured in the 2017 event.
Rugby League World Cup CEO, Jon Dutton, says not everyone could be included and the organising body was determined to have a good spread of nations involved.
"It's worth reflecting that 50 percent of the nations are from Asia-Pacific and it's quite unusual that in a tournament that is actually going to be staged in Europe, only a quarter or 25 percent of the nations are from Europe. We were very keen to have the maximum number of continents playing and obviously we have Europe, Asia-Pacific, North American and for the first time ever, South America."
Jon Dutton says world rankings and the fact the Cook Islands and Papua New Guinea played at the last tournament meant they were looked upon favourably, while the sport's development and commercial interests were also taken into account.
"It's a snapshot in time...the reason we made the decision now is to promote the tournament we've got some really ambitious ticket sales targets. We're doing our draw in November, which will be a very big, public event so I guess for Fiji and for others if we'd made our decisions in 12 or 18 months time we may have got a different result but the the line had to be drawn somewhere."
Jon Dutton says an Emerging Nations tournament is also being planned for 2021 and he hopes one day that format could double as a World Cup qualifying event for future tournaments.
