The Oceania Youth Cup will be held in Fiji on the weekend of December 11th and 12th later this year.

The project driven by Oceania Manager Andrew Cadzow is another fantastic leap forward in creating a High Performance pathway for the Oceania Region.

AFL New Zealand have scheduled a secondary school tournament structure to be held on a national basis which will commence on October 21/22/23 with an aim of providing a talented NZ team that will also provide representatives for the Oceania team to be selected and to hopefully play in the 2010 Australian Under 16 Championships.

Countries invited include: New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Fiji, Tonga, Nauru, Solomon Islands, Samoa and Vanautu.

Players must be born in 1993 or younger (16 or younger ) but each team can have 6 players older than that age group after receiving  a permit from tournament director Andrew Cadzow.

The New Zealand Secondary School Tournaments will involve years 9 and 10 and take place in an after school format to avoid both exams and school scheduling issues.

Talent Identification programmes will be run during lunch breaks and after school targeting senior students who will not compete in the junior competition.

For full details of the secondary school programme click here.