But the organisation is in the market for an outside back.
Otago Rugby Association chief executive Richard Kinley denied the team had inked a deal with an overseas player.
However, Otago did have a lack of depth in the spot and Kinley said they were open to finding someone from outside of the region.
"We want to pick local players and from the club competition", Kinley said.
"However, if we think it is not in the best interests for the development of the next best player then we are not going to put them in an unsafe environment and we will look to go outside the region.
"We have not done that very often during the last few years. But there is a shortage of outside backs, I’m not going to deny that.
"There are some good young backs coming through. But on that ... we met with Jamie Joseph and the high-performance staff over at the Highlanders three weeks ago.
"We went through all the players at that next level down to assess what would be the best level of competition for their development and we did not identify any outside backs we felt were ready for a starting position in the NPC.
"A lot of the teams we are playing against are full of Super Rugby players, so we’ve got to make sure we are giving the players that time so they are ready when we put them out on the paddock", Kinley said.
Otago has 27 players on their books but only two of them are specialist wingers — Jona Nareki and Jeremiah Asi.
Josh Whaanga played on the wing for most of last season but Otago still view him as a midfielder, and Asi has been out with a shoulder injury but is expected to be back this weekend.
Asi plays for University in the Dunedin premier grade and they are playing Green Island at Miller Park.
Kinley said Otago would release their contracted players such as Asi for the club playoffs. But those decisions would be made on a week-by-week basis.
Players who have had a busy workload with the Highlanders are unlikely to feature for their club.
"We have a couple of players who have a few little niggles as well. But there will be players available."
Otago will open their NPC campaign against Southland in Invercargill on August 10.
They have a couple of warm-up matches before that.
They play Southland in Gore on July 26 and Canterbury in Rolleston on August 2.
An Otago high-performance team was going to play a match against an Otago Country selection team last week but the game was axed because of the difficulties around the timing of the game and player availability.
