The Wan Papua Warriors rugby league team have joined forces with some players from New Zealand and Australia in order to field a team at this weekend's London Nines.
The Wan Papua Warriors rugby league team have joined forces with some players from New Zealand and Australia in order to field a team at this weekend's London Nines.
Formerly known as the West Papua Warriors, the team was formed to raise awareness about the on-going human rights abuses in the Indonesian province.
24 men's teams and six women's teams will compete at the London Nines, with all games running for fifteen minutes with unlimited interchanges and no stoppages.
Captain Tala Kami said they only brought four players over from Papua New Guinea but they will get by with a little help from their friends.
"We were hoping to get a few more with us but unfortunately due to the funding we could only get four of us over here," Kami said.
"What we've done now is we've combined with a team called the Wests Warriors, which are a rugby team based here in London, made up of expats from Aussies and Kiwis, and we're pretty much going to be playing together.
"They're also big advocates of West Papua and they were contacting us in the build-up to this so we've decided to join forces and we're going to play together as one team on the weekend," he said
The Wan Papua Warriors are joining forces with the Wests Warriors at the London 9s. Photo: Facebook/Wan Papua Warriors
Kami said despite only having a couple of training runs together as a full squad, they still expected to be competitive on the field.
"The boys have been training really hard for the last few months, pretty much every day. We've come to win, we've come to perform to our best so we're 100 percent ready, physically and mentally, for the tournament."
