Is there a future for the NRL in PNG?

Thanks Mike, a good summary. Appreciate it. They sure put the hours in for not a lot of cash, good effort.

Having worked in PNG for many years, one of the main issues the PNG team will face is corruption which is rampant throughout the whole country. I can see a lot of the funding going into the PNG team end up lining someones pockets.

I went to St Gregs (boarding school) in the 80's and there were a few PNG boys. They never played MCS in the top level, though all the boarders had to participate in the Winter with League. They have everything, their skills we'rent great. Passing, tacking and so forth. It's different now because of Qld League. I live in Queensland now. It's alot better then Perth and Adelaide ....also, Wellington.

There are varying opinions on why expansion has been delayed, perhaps all or in part a collection of is the truth? Who knows. Perhaps do nothing and maybe sometime in the future a solution will present itself? All I know is that a rationalisation of sport in Australia needs to happen. There is I believe too many sporting teams, codes that dilute the number and quality of players available to provide quality matches. The AFL is experiencing this, there is simply not enough 1st grade quality players available. Less is more, better quality more competitive matches is what fans want. There is a multitude of other reasons too many to mention.

Leaving aside the glib stock exchange comment, for a professional sports league to not do a cost benefit for a major investment is outright negligence, even charities do this for goodness sake. From there it’s almost a wookies on endor kind of argument. Brazil has crime like PNG - > brazil contributes to world soccer -> PNG deserves a team in the NRL. Now sure if we assume the only thing that drove Brazil’s contribution to world soccer was a history of violent crime that may have legs but I’m going to hazard a guess that things like being more than double the population of Germany probably helped to. It also ignores that Brazil contributes by exporting talent, it has its own local leagues and form part of someone else’s premier domestic comp or anything of that ilk right? So I can’t see any credibility to the argument that subsidising an NRL team in PNG, with both funding and players, is similar to Brazil developing talent internally and shipping it half way around the world to less populated soccer mad countries? PNG “deserves” in my mind to be nurtured by international league and to have a place in the rugby league landscape. But I can’t see anything deserving about it being a part of an ANZ professional competition such as the NRL.

Parra - Everyone seems to be caught up in this mantra that for the game to expand it must contract in Sydney, it almost become gospel and it is holding the game back Of course the current sixteen clubs do not want more clubs because they see it as a smaller slice of the pie for themselves so they come up with all sorts of arguments as to why we can't have more teams. In other words the game is going to get caught in a loop, no Sydney club is going to euthanise itself or relocate to some city a thousand miles from where their supporters live no matter how much you bribe them.Also whether it is wise to contract the sport in it's global financial heartland is debatable anyway. So we will never expand to Adelaide or Perth or Wellington or anywhere else because Moses has carved onto a stone tablet thy will not have more than sixteen teams.

If the NRL is a business lets just float it on the stock exchange and be done with it,The fact there is not a "business case" for a team in PNG is not everything. Yeh it's poor it's corrupt it's sclerotic. it's violent but that has nothing to do with Rugby League,Brazil is all of the above but has contributed plenty to soccer and so can PNG to Rugby League It is also the one country on the planet where the game is the national sport, lets hope they they get an NRL team one day because they deserve one,

I think the Parkes Spaceman would get promoted to the NRL before a PNG team.

I agree with you on the Sydney teams. The NRL management should withdraw from helping out those teams struggling financially. Many of those teams are in the Sydney basin. If they can't manage their funding, let them go. Even if one team goes, that allows an opening for a Perth side. As well, reduce the Sydney sides, move the Dragons to play their home games out of Wollongong. A team on the Gold Coast has struggled for years often caving in. If the GC moved on, there is a position for an Adelaide side. Personally, I don't see any of this happening. There are just too many vested interests involved.

Johnno, my son plays for East Tigers, they start the pre season training 3 days a week, Monday, Wednesday & Friday starting around 5pm, they do a lot of gym work & stamina work, after Xmas they start on skills & ball work, defensive structures, gym work on the same days, when the season starts they train the same days, the player from the Storm arrive from Melbourne on Friday if the play on Saturday or on Saturday if playing on Sunday, this is the only time that the Melbourne players train with the team.

That was the condition of coming into the Q Cup, didn't you know that, but that has nothing to do with the training, gym work etc, so what's your point, how does the paying for everything by the club impact on the players.

Silly comment. Most franchises in PNG have backing of local businesses, many owned by expats. You also forget, the game is loved by the people warts & all. I doubt its because of politicians the game survives solely.

If we want to bring in the likes of PNG then the NRL needs to morph into something else. Right now it can't even satisfy the needs of its own nation. "National" Rugby League still only covers NSW, parts of QLD and a token gesture in Victoria. Less than half the geographic spread of the country and we have been putting any change to that on the back burner for a decade. The game's so called strategic review was an abject failure. Nothing strategic at all just a few tactical actions at the detailed level and more delay fumble and bust on expansion. What we need (and what should have been delivered over the last year) is a roadmap that details how and approximately when this game might expand. The timescale does not matter as much the vision. Does the NRL stay roughly the same and we see an emergence of an Asia Pacific RL ? Does the NRL develop a second division and admit the likes of PNG. What about Superleague - is there some future tie in here ? How would we support all that ? Unfortunately, the whole of game review was anything other than strategic.

Imagine this... The Bunnies play the new NRL club, the Hunters, in a Round 3 encounter at the new 15k Port Moresby stadium. The Hunters go down in a close one, courtesy of a last minute try and (heaven forbid) a dubious ref decision. A restless local crowd becomes louder, and then angry, with violence spilling onto the field and onto the streets. The Rabbitohs, NRL staff, visitors, broadcasters and their equipment, player buses, merchandise sellers - are all targets of the anger. Again, this isn't hysteria. This is what happens regularly for local games. People just don't appreciate what it's like 'on the ground' in PNG.

Also their real growth rate isn't much more than Nz given inflation. Another thing worth noting is they'd have to grow by about 30-40% to match the dollar value

Great so they've got the per capita gdp a country readily associated with rampant poverty and shanty towns. Pity that they are less than a percent of total gdp. "business people" invested in China and India because of the population not per capita gdp.

"Is there a future for the NRL in PNG?" Only if this is seen as a real steepping stone towards an NRL team and not just an entrance way for the NRL to grab players? Not if the NRL retreats to insular agendas and blinkered horizons yet again! And certainly not if no one takes the idea seriously and provides a step by step progression of how it will actually happen! So given the above as the norm and barometer the answer is sadly NO, once more, yet again, as usual, as you were, for the foreseeable future,or when pigs fly in formation over Abbotsford!

That's true we have the energy to gain popularity in the game but we really lack financial support..to secure a place in NRL means the government's decision to cut Half (maybe all) of the sport's budget to the game......I think it's not possible...it's best PNG need to budget for more than five years to have a team in NRL....

yes that didn't make sense.

I thought the QRL don't give the Hunters $1 dollar, all self-funded via sponsors etc.