Eddie Daniel leads boxers on Tahitian quest

Experienced Cook Islands welterweight boxing champion Eddie Daniel will lead a team of four boxers to participate in a tournament in Tahiti this month aspart of their preparations for the Pacific Mini Games in September.

Fiji, Samoa and Vanuatu have also been invited to send boxers to the tournament as part of their preparations for the Pacific Mini Games.

The Cook Islands squad which will leave for Tahiti on Saturday 25 July comprises boxers Eddie Daniel (team leader), Marcus Jack, Matthew Titoa, and Osolei Akai (aka Hagai) as well as a manager and a coach. The manager is boxing association president Tupou Faireka and the national boxing coach is Tom Marsters (not the Leader of the Opposition) who once ran a boxing club in the South Island of New Zealand.

While the Tahitians are paying the expenses of four boxers, the manager andt he coach, it's possible other officials such as Emile Cowan, Navy Epati, and Teava Matapo may pay their own way.

Government may also chip in to allow another boxer to join the squad. The Tahitians requested a fifth boxer Yves Obeda but their sponsorship is limited to the four boxers above plus manager and coach. Boxing secretary Charles Pitt says Minister of Foreign Affairs Wilkie Rasmussen is travelling to Tahiti on government business with Manihiki MP Apii Piho and he has offered to include a boxer in his delegation.

Pitt said the Cook Islands team could hold their own in Tahiti physically. But in a venue before 3,000 screaming Tahitian onlookers they might feel intimidated and be like a fish out of water. They needed to be mentally prepared. To help the squad seek the right attitude the association has asked former Rugby League great Kevin Iro to speak to them before they head off to Tahiti.

While Tupou Faireka is relishing the opportunity to manage the team in Tahiti, he admits looking further ahead that the preparations back home for the Mini Games in September are experiencing "a few hiccups".

For boxing bouts during the Mini Games, the lights in the auditorium are switched off and there is supposed to be one special light beaming down on the sparring fighters in the ring. Getting this light is a task boxing officials have grappled with the past four weeks. Importing the lighting framework will take too long to get here so it has to be made locally. Rarotonga Welding and Steel Construction Ltd can build it at a cost of around $700 to $900 but who is paying for the work is not yet clear.

The ring is another hiccup. The boxing ring for the Mini Games has been ordered from United States. "But we don't know when it is going to arrive," says Faireka.

A third hiccup for boxing is they don't yet know who will be in Rarotonga in September. "We can't put a programme together until we know who is confirmed and who is participating."

The fourth hiccup is the lack of qualified boxing judges and referees in Rarotonga. Only Joseph Haupini and Jim Little qualify but Jim Little may not be available. Others like Tom Marsters (Leader of the Opposition) need to be recertified. "I applied for funds four to five months ago for the secondment of a technical official Keith Walker (Secretary of the New Zealand Boxing Association) to run workshops for judges and referees. It hasn't come through. We're going to email judges and referees in Oceania to find who can come at their cost. When I am in Tahiti I will be asking them if they can come."

Boxing has assigned two deputies to Faireka: Mike Jonassen is looking after the equipment needs and Patricia Barton is looking after the accreditation and medical checks of the local boxers.

Some volunteers have been assigned for security and to mind boxers' possessions while they are competing. Other volunteers will be on hand to help other teams with their training, weighing and transport needs.

Because the Games are in Rarotonga, it is a rare opportunity for the boxing association to field boxers in all 11 divisions but they admit they may not achieve this.

Faireka says they will struggle to find boxers who can fight in the lower weight divisions of flyweight and featherweight. Former Cook Islands boxing star Richard Pittman offered to look at the Cook Islanders in his gymnasium in Wellington but the association has yet to hear from him in the two months since he left Rarotonga.

At the moment, nine boxers are training for the Games, two of them in Auckland. The association is confident five boxers will make the grade while the other four still need to do a little more to secure their place in the team for September.

[Postscript: CISNOC's Robert Graham says 11 countries have indicated they will compete in boxing: American Samoa, Cook Islands, Fiji, Kiribati, Nauru, New Caledonia, Niue, Samoa, Tahiti, Tonga and Vanuatu. Expect the major boxing countries Samoa, Tahiti and Fiji to send full squads. The other countries will probably send four or five boxers on average.