NRL 2024: The wild 36-hour journey for PNG kids’ to bid team’s rugby league tournament
The PNG NRL bid team have held their first tournament, with some kids making an incredible 36-hour journey, walking through swamps and sleeping on floors just to play the game they adore.
This is the most extraordinary rugby league story you will read all season.
A tale about a 36-hour journey on trucks, boats, buses, planes, even walking through swamps and sleeping on a floor. Just to play the game they adore, rugby league.
And to foster their insatiable dream of competing in the NRL.
The NRL PNG Bid Championship started in Goroka, Papua New Guinea, on Saturday for rising stars to kick-start their surge toward the NRL.
And the trip to Goroka from East New Britain for the New Guinea Islands teams was nothing short of astonishing.
If passion was one of the top criteria, the NRL would name PNG as an expansion franchise.
The New Guinea Island trip start on:
- Thursday, 2am: Managers drove around Kokopo, Rabaul and Matupit Island on East New Britain province for four hours in a truck to collect the 44 men’s and women’s players.
- 6am: Players jumped into five dinghy boats – Aussies would call them tinnies - with motorised engines at the rear for a two hour journey to Namatanai. The boats were roofless. A team assistant coach and four of his four friends drove the boats. Players were dipping their hands in the water. The rough conditions meant all players were drenched during the journey.
- 7.45am: A dry reef near the beach meant players had to walk the final 100 metres through a swamp while lugging their gear.
- 8am – 10am: Players showered and changed at Alice in New Ireland Province jumping in three 15-seat buses for a four-hour journey to Kavieng.
- Thursday night: Players and staff stay overnight in Kavieng in a transit house. The men stayed downstairs and slept on tiles, women upstairs on the floor. They slept in laplaps, similar to a sarong.
- Friday morning: Flew to Port Moresby after the first flight was cancelled and waited four hours at the airport for a 90-minute connecting flight to Goroka, arriving at 5.30pm.
The women are bunking down at the National Sports Institute with the men staying in East Goroka. And it will be an identical journey home.
“For us, that can be normal,” said Team New Guinea Islands team manager Nicole Kamara.
“Just the excitement, you don’t really think about time or hours. The kids make it enjoyable. It’s something they will remember for the rest of their lives.”
Other teams shared a similar challenging path to Goroka.
With the PNG NRL bid appearing successful, locals in footy-mad PNG have started their relentless pursuit for stardom in a two-day event for men’s under-19s and women’s under-18’s.
There are 240 competing players in the first-ever tournament through 12 teams - six men and six women - from around the PNG. It has been a 16-week preparation.
The tournament is willing, noisy, fierce and skilled. The collision is frightening. All games were covered on Digicel TV with 16 of 22 games being telecast live.
PNG Rugby League CEO Stanley Hondina revealed why players travel such long distances to play rugby league.
“The geographical terrain and challenges of this country are massive,” Hondina said.
“Every kid dreams about playing footy. Rugby league inspires our people and it puts a lot of drive into the younger kids.
“Our closest and dearest neighbours (Australia) have an influence over PNG through the NRL. It’s phenomenal.”
The passion for rugby league over here is suffocating, as is the adulation for the NRL. Everywhere you look, you see NRL jumpers, shirts and caps. PNG is organised chaos but the 800 tribes and villages unite through rugby league.
“There is no other country in the world that worships rugby league like we do here in PNG,” said director of the PNG national sports institute, Janet Gimots.
A six-team women’s competition will start in early August.
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