by JAMES B. WAUGLA
Samoa put 64 points on the Kumuls in front of a sold-out Santos National Football Stadium on 24 October and conceded six. England finished us 34-12 in Wollongong six days later. PNG co-hosted this World Cup and went out in the pool stage. Tonga and Samoa are in the semi-finals.
You have to ask yourself this question: who is actually winning in rugby league? It is not PNG. Players of Pasifika heritage make up 52 per cent of all NRL talent. NRL.com's own list of PNG internationals at NRL clubs this season has six names across 17 clubs. Samoans, Tongans and Fijians are building careers and family wealth from this game. We are the fans and the worshippers.
Even Lebanon is winning. We beat the Cedars 42-18 in Port Moresby, yet Lebanon reached the quarter-finals at the last two World Cups, exactly as we did, with a side built around NRL players such as Jacob Kiraz and Alex Twal. Lebanon's strength sits in Sydney, not Beirut. Its players got inside the Australian system early.
Our own NRL club tells the same story. Australia is putting A$600 million over ten years behind the PNG Chiefs, with a security condition aimed at keeping China out. Player 001 is Jarome Luai, a Samoan international on a tax-free salary. Player 006 is Brian To'o, who helped Samoa put 64 on us in Port Moresby. The first PNG-born players to join the club, Gairo Voro, Morea Morea and Finley Glare, came in on development contracts. Voro tore Lebanon apart on 17 October. Alex Johnston aside, the big money in our own franchise is going to Samoan internationals and established NRL and Super League names.
The reasons are not hidden. Polynesian families have migration access to New Zealand and, through the trans-Tasman open border, to Australia. Lowy Institute analysts noted in 2017 that most elite players must be in high-level programs by 16 or 17, and Polynesian boys reach those systems young. A boy in Mendi or Lae does not. Former Kumuls captain John Wilshere said in 2013 that the PNG route was harder and that the gap might come down to immigration. Thirteen years on, the only fixes on the table came from the ARLC and Canberra, not Waigani.
The PNG Hunters already proved talent is not the problem. Given a place in a proper competition, they won the Queensland Cup in 2017, their fourth season. The problem is access, and access is a political decision.
Our fanaticism is propping up a game that, by world standards, is regional. PNG is the only country that calls rugby league its national sport. The expansion is sold as a 10-million-plus audience for the NRL. To the NRL we are a market. To Canberra we are a security asset. We are not yet a source of players.
PNG needs to sit down and make battle plans, because we are too far gone on this wrong journey. Three would be a start.
1. Every NRL club may now sign two PNG pathway players outside the salary cap. That is 34 places across 17 clubs. The PNGRFL should publish every year how many are filled.
2. A reported A$290 million of the Australian money is for football operations in PNG. Parliament should see how much of it reaches juniors.
3. If our rugby league is worth A$600 million to Australian security, it is worth a visa pathway that puts our 15-year-olds in Australian academies, the way migration rules already do for Polynesian kids.
Until then, the other Pacific Islanders will keep winning, and we will keep watching.
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