A fiercely proud and industrious First Nations & Pasifika team have been told they will be \u201cplaying to keep the jersey alive\u201d on their Tradition HKFC 10s debut next month.<\/p>\n
Comprised of players of Indigenous Australian or Pacific Islander origin, First Nations & Pasifika gave the British & Irish Lions a tremendous fright in their inaugural fixture last year.<\/p>\n
While the side ultimately beaten 24-19 featured \u201cthe best of the best\u201d, according to general manager Matt Sonter, it will be a younger but no less passionate group that comes to Hong Kong under the charge of Australia great Glen Ella.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe way they train and their work ethic; they\u2019re a credit to the game and to their families,\u201d said Sonter, the former Australia 7s captain.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m excited about watching some of them put themselves on national selection radars through playing well in Hong Kong.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s an element of passion in the jersey that doesn\u2019t exist in others. They\u2019re representing their culture, their people and their families. In Melbourne [before the Lions match] the language used was that we needed to play well to keep this jersey alive; to give younger First Nations and Pasifika people in Australia the chance to represent them.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A fiercely proud and industrious First Nations & Pasifika team have been told they will be \u201cplaying to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":556641,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[12365,58864,64,63,274897,274898,6408,3739,4398,274895,10340,10578,274896,274894,193050,760,85,11229],"class_list":["post-556640","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-aboriginal","tag-act-brumbies","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-australia-7s","tag-bailey-roberts-lintmeijer","tag-british-irish-lions","tag-fiji","tag-first-nations","tag-glen-ella","tag-hong-kong","tag-kurtley-beale","tag-lloyd-mcdermott-rugby-development-team","tag-matt-sonter","tag-pasifika","tag-rugby","tag-sports","tag-western-force"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/556640","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=556640"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/556640\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/556641"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=556640"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=556640"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=556640"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}