It started back in the days of Cathrine Tuivaiti (Latu as she was then), and all the fuss over trying to get her eligible to play for NZ after she had played for Samoa. NNZ put in a rule that players had to decide early who they were going to play for and there couldn’t be any swapping between NZ and Pacific Island countries. From that time on, with less NZ based players, Oceania nations have gone backwards in the rankings. You can see that in the fact they’re playing this now when the Comm Games are 10 days away. At various times in the past, Fiji, Samoa and Cook Islands would all have been in the running to compete. Now, they’re all outside the top 12.
