Papua New Guinea's rugby league fervour set to greet World Cup crowds in Port Moresby
Edwin Ipape says he is moved to tears by the scenes that greet Papua New Guinea's national teams in Port Moresby, which will host four matches of the Rugby League World Cup that runs 15 October - 15 November and is co-hosted by Papua New Guinea, Australia and New Zealand.
The sport was introduced to PNG in the 1930s by Australian miners and took hold across the island, where the game's physicality resonated with local players and communities; children fashion makeshift balls and fans mob teams, sometimes to the point of violence that has in the past required police to fire tear gas. Only the Cook Islands is described in the source as coming close to PNG in terms of national obsession with rugby league, and villages frequently gather around a single television to watch NRL or Super League matches.
Participation pathways run from village and provincial rugby through the PNG Hunters in Australia's Queensland Cup to professional leagues overseas, and the sport is a vehicle for international opportunity. Edwin Ipape, 27, played for PNG at the 2022 Rugby League World Cup and now turns out for Leigh Leopards; recalling his childhood in Mount Hagen he said: "If you're lucky enough, you play with a rugby league ball. Otherwise, you play with containers, you put stuff in it, fill it up and then make it like a ball and whatever... whatever we can get our hands on, we may pretend that it was our rugby ball." He added: "I remember saving up my lunch money to buy myself one of those American footballs and using it as a rugby ball so we could play."
The rise of the women's side, the Orchids, has been chronicled in the 2019 documentary Power Meri and their debut World Cup came in 2017; Elsie Albert, who plays for the Orchids and for Parramatta Eels in the NRL Women's Premiership, observed: "People in Papua New Guinea probably don't know who the prime minister is, but they know all the NRL [National Rugby League] players." Albert also recalled cultural resistance to women's participation: "Women were supposed to stay at home and do household chores, so when this great game came over [for women], it was seen as a threat to the culture," and added that during the pioneering period "the pioneering girls had men throwing bottles at them into the stadium, but in 2019 everything changed for us when we played England." England won the first Test 24-10 in Goroka, but the second in Port Moresby finished 20-16 to PNG.
Papuan players have also made an impact at club level in England; Jason Demetriou, the Kumuls head coach, runs London Broncos at Plough Lane and helped recruit a cohort of PNG players including Gairo Voro, Morea Morea, Epil Kapinias, Alex Max, Robert Mathias, Finley Glare and Jeremiah Simbiken. Those players helped London Broncos to a treble—the Championship League Leaders' Shield, the 1895 Cup and the divisional Grand Final title—and Gairo Voro scored one of London Broncos' 14 tries as they beat Doncaster 78-6 in the Championship Grand Final earlier this month. Demetriou noted: "There's going to be eyeballs on every player in the World Cup," adding that PNG will face Lebanon, England and Samoa in the group and that opponents will also face PNG on the world stage.
Visiting players describe the Port Moresby atmosphere as overwhelming and affectionate rather than hostile; Leigh Leopards' hooker Liam Horne recalled hitchhiking when recognised by a local and said: "We actually needed a lift to go to one of these shopping centres, so we just hitchhiked. We got this random guy to pick us up and he couldn't believe it. He had two Kumuls in his back seat and he was freaking out. The people over there, they love it. They're welcoming." Horne also described the stadium noise as "Loud" and said: "It sounds like 30,000." Kumuls stalwart Lachlan Lam, who is absent from this World Cup because he needs wrist surgery, likened the atmosphere to "a proper scream." A teammate was quoted as saying: "I've not experienced anything like it. You can't hear yourself talking to other team-mates and things like that. "And, just the heat - you can't believe the whole stadium is packed out. It's like 40C and they're up there singing and dancing and carrying on. So the atmosphere is unbelievable."
Santos National Football Stadium, described in the source as having a capacity of just under 15,000, will stage the four matches PNG is hosting at the Rugby League World Cup; the timetable for the Port Moresby fixtures includes a Saturday double-header when the Orchids face France and the Kumuls take on Lebanon during the tournament running 15 October - 15 November.