Vanuatu

The draw will take place at 1pm NZT at the OFC Home of Football – Te Kahu o Kiwa in Auckland, New Zealand.

OFC Competitions Director Chris Kemp will conduct proceedings.

There is no seeding system for this edition of the OFC Champions League so teams will be drawn from a single pot and will be drawn into two groups of four, Group A and Group B with matches to be played in Port Vila and Luganville.

PasifikaTV is excited to be broadcasting the series to the Pacific in what is sure to be another delicious celebration of vibrant food from across the region that highlights the passion and skill of the people making it.

Teams of two will be representing the Kingdom of Tonga, Fiji, Vanuatu, Samoa, and Papua New Guinea.

Season 3 will take place over six episodes, displaying the skills of contestants while also educating viewers on how food can be used to address issues the Pacific is facing including obesity, stunting, diabetes and climate change.

The Solomon Islands and Vanuatu will open on July 1, with Samoa and the Federated States of Micronesia a month later on August 1.

The revised competition format, which was adapted in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic to reduce travel requirements on teams, is split into two phases.

Stage one will determine which clubs contest stage two, which will be an eight-team centralised finals tournament scheduled for August this year.

Fiji, New Caledonia, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu will stage home and away playoffs – involving the champion and runner up from their respective national league – through June, from which each winner will secure qualification to the finals tournament.

Super typhoons, the withdrawal of government support and Covid-19 have disrupted the event which will now take place from June 17-25. It was originally due to be held in May/June 2021.

The hosts and Fiji lead the delegations with 125 athletes apiece.

Solomon Islands has 117 athletes while New Caledonia has 109. The smallest delegations are Norfolk Island and American Samoa with three each.

The 20 Pacific nations and territories attending and their number of athletes are:

It's Vanuatu's first appearance in the competition since 2010.

In Group A, Tonga have been drawn with the Cook Islands and Samoa.

Hosts Fiji are in Group C where they face New Caledonia and Solomon Islands.

The nine-team competition is being held from July 13-30.

The competition winner then goes into a ten-team inter-continental tournament to find three qualifiers for the Women's World Cup finals being hosted by New Zealand and Australia in 2023.

New Zealand, as co-hosts, are exempt from the qualifying tournament.

Head coach Jitka Klimková has recalled the likes of Grace Jale, Anna Green and Ally Green to the squad for the series.

Meanwhile, Fiji are also off to Australia. Head coach Lisa Cole will hope fixtures against first-time World Cup qualifiers the Philippines on April 7 and 11 in Sydney can inspire her side to future success.

Fiji, runners-up at the OFC Women’s Nations Cup 2018, will know a repeat of four years ago will give them a chance to enter the inter-confederation play-offs next February, with three World Cup spots up for grabs.

The tournament will determine which nation will represent Oceania in the FIFA intercontinental play-off in June 2022, from which the winner earns a spot at the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022™ finals.  

A standalone match between the two lowest-ranked OFC nations, Tonga and the Cook Islands, will be held on March 13 to determine who qualifies through to join Group A and contest the preliminary competition. 

Group A, which will be made up of the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Tahiti and the qualifying match winner, will have its first Match Day on March 17. 

New Zealand has a new one-way travel bubble with Pacific island countries such as Samoa, Vanuatu and Tonga.

Vaccinated RSE workers from these countries can come to New Zealand without self-isolating or taking Covid-19 tests on arrival, after the one-way quarantine-free travel took effect last week.

Up to 5,000 workers are needed across the horticulture and viticulture industries during peak summer season in December and January.

The usual supply of backpackers to New Zealand's recognised seasonal workers scheme remains cut off due to Covid-19 border restrictions.

In the last 18 months, around 12,000 workers have come into Australia from countries such as Vanuatu and Samoa.

But how many have stayed in the jobs, they were contracted to do?

ABC Rural has been told more than 1,000 of these workers have absconded, with many poached by labour hire companies that are not licensed to do so.

What's going wrong?

Speaking to RN, Richard Shannon from Growcom said across Australia, farmers were reporting seasonal workers suddenly leaving their jobs.