First things first, I want to apologise to our loyal and valued readers for my tardiness over the last week or so.
As Jase mentioned over the weekend, I was lucky enough to travel with the PNG Hunters to Port Moresby last week as they brought the QRL Hostplus Cup back to Papua New Guinea for the first time in over three years.
The five-day trip was equal parts exhilarating, exhausting and indescribable to the outsider, but in light of my limited viewing of both the NRL and the NRLW across the weekend, I’ve decided to use this feature to give our RLW faithful a little glimpse at the Hunters’ heroics on Saturday (as well as a few things I noticed from Round 2 of the NRLW).
Again, apologies for the delay in getting this content to you and as always, your support does not go unnoticed. Without further ado, here’s how the PNG Hunters homecoming played out…
A fairy-tale finish
The crowds started filing in from 1 pm but the buzz throughout the city began well before that. The team was greeted at the airport earlier that week by a hoard of camera crews and a swarm of joyous fans desperate to catch a first glimpse of their beloved Hunters from beyond the airport gates.
As the Port Moresby locals poured into the Santos National Football Stadium on a cool, 32 degree Saturday afternoon, it was obvious we were in for something special. I shared a quiet reflective moment with Jase over WhatsApp before the game (not looking forward to my phone bill this month…) but by 3pm it was impossible to think of anything else.
Rugby league is a religion in Papua New Guinea.
For every bit of Hunters kit made in the last nine years there was an NRL jersey, flag or cap to match, signifying the local’s NRL preference. Justin Olam can be thanked for a strong Melbourne Storm representation but I saw every set of colours littered throughout the 6,000+ crowd that came to watch the Hunters play their Round 20 QRL Hostplus Cup fixture against the Mackay Cutters.
With both sides out of finals contention, you’d be forgiven for writing this off as a dead rubber but for the PNG rugby league fanatics, it was anything but.
Right from the kick-off the crowd was into it – cheering with every crunching tackle and jeering at every blow of the referee’s whistle. Two early tries to the Cutters – one a clever switch play on the line to isolate a 108kg Jayden Morgan against Hunters fullback Tyler Han and another to Mackay’s custodian Kyle Krisanski-Kennedy sweeping around a questionable decoy line – threatened to subdue the locals, but as they have done for the last three seasons now the Hunters dug deep and clawed their way back into the contest.
The recipe for success for PNG in 2022 has been front-loading their defence and building pressure with their line speed and that’s exactly how they responded to a 12-point deficit on Saturday. A good yardage kick as the game settled into a grind pinned Mackay in their own corner and a few tackles later the Cutters tried to shift from their 20 metre line as PNG rushed up in defence to force an error. Hunters centre Rodrick Tai was the man on the spot to pick up the loose ball, beating four defenders on his way to the line to open the scoring for his team.
The Hunters next try was far less opportunistic.
On the other side of the field, left-centre Benji Kot has been one of the Hunters’ more dangerous outside backs this season and he used his trademark speed and fend to pluck a lovely cut-out pass out of the air and score just a few minutes later.
You can see the Cutters centre shooting up here to cut down the time of backrower Keven Appo (12) on the Hunters’ left edge as the pass goes over the top. It’s a poor read from the defence but one they were influenced to make due to the running threat and strength through contact of the Hunters forwards. If you don’t get at them quickly or bring numbers into the tackle you’re asking for trouble and in this instance PNG’s halfback Judah Rimbu makes a good read to cut out his backrower and give Kot some early ball.
With the halftime break looming, the Hunters then produced some enterprising play back down their right edge to run it on the last and score on the siren through winger Liam Joseph.
Five-eighth Kingstimer Paraia uses his vision and footwork to beat the kick pressure and sneak down a short side on fifth tackle. He gets a nice pass away to backrower Sherwin Tanabi (11) who produces a Viliame Kikau-like over-the-shoulder offload which doesn’t hit the mark but does get a result when Wesser Tenza pops the loose ball up for Tai in some space.
With electric acceleration and great upper-body strength, Tai makes short work of the edge defence to skip to the outside and pop a pass back in to Joseph in support. The young winger then uses his long stride and longer reach to dive over in the corner and give PNG the lead at the break.
The conditions clearly played a part in the second stanza as fatigue set in and both sides struggled at times to get through their sets. It’s one of the key differences between Cup and NRL level – the willingness and ability to kick to corners, stay in the grind and build pressure through completions – and whoever does this best in the Hostplus Cup gets the result more often than not.
That’s certainly how this one played out to begin the second half. The Cutters kicking game constantly turned the Hunters around and it was only the strength of the Hunters back five in yardage that kept them in the contest:
| Player | All runs | Run metres |
| 1. Tyler Han | 11 | 104 |
| 2. Brandon Nima | 11 | 144 |
| 3. Benji Kot | 9 | 124 |
| 4. Rodrick Tai | 16 | 191 |
| 5. Liam Joseph | 9 | 117 |
Two more tries to Mackay orchestrated individually by former NRL player Gehamat Shibisaki gave the Cutters back the lead with the clock winding down, but the Hunters’ resilience and bravery in the face of adversity has been the tale of their three-year relocation period on the Gold Coast and they embraced that same mentality on Saturday to again claw themselves back into the fight.
It started with a trademark Hunters try to interchange forward Emmanuel Waine in the 50th minute.
Paraia (6) has spent plenty of time at dummy-half this season and confidently points Waine (15) and Junior Rop (17) into position beside the posts here as he waits for the play-the-ball. This tight block shape is one the Hunters have had great success with this year and is a good example of PNG playing to their strengths. Waine is an absolute beast of a ball carrier – think Cronulla’s Siosifa Talakai – and he will win a one-on-one matchup like this 10 times out of 10.
I was lucky enough to have a front row seat for this one…
Paraia was at it again just seven minutes later when he put in a perfectly weighted kick for his backrower Tanabi to score. It was a clever piece of eyes up playmaking by the five-eighth but if you rewind the tape it was again the result of PNG playing to their strengths through the middle.
Appo (12) takes possession over the ad line and launches himself into the defence to bend the line and get a quick play-the-ball, and then Rimbu drops a charging Rop back against the grain to do the same on the following play. The Hunters have now gone 20+ metres in two tackles and have Mackay on the ropes. As the Cutters scramble to reset their line, Paraia takes possession on the right edge and sums things up with a lovely early kick for Tanabi to score.
The best was yet to come through.
As the Hunters worked out their own end with just two minutes remaining and four points behind on the scoreboard, Wartovo Puara Jnr – a dummy-half in the twilight of his career and in the back-end of a 49-minute stint in blistering conditions – inexplicably places himself at halfback on PNG’s right edge.
What came next can only be described as a rugby league miracle.
I’m not sure if it was hope or fate or a mixture of the two, but as PNG played the ball on their 40 metre line I suddenly felt the urge to stop following the play and make my way towards the try line. With camera in hand, I reached the far end of the field and looked up to see Puara Jnr (9) orchestrate this:
A two-pass shift through Puara sends the ball down the right edge and into the hands of PNG’s strike centre. With a shimmy-and-a-go, Tai burns his opposite man to create the overlap (despite Mackay having the numbers advantage with a Hunters player in the bin) and flicks an offload out the back to his wing partner. Joseph then tip-toes down the touchline, beating no less than four Mackay defenders to get his arm free and throw a pass back inside to – you guessed it – Puara Jnr who sells Shibisaki a dummy for the ages to skip back in towards the post and level things up.
A regulation conversion by Paraia as the siren sounded capped off a fairytale finish that quite literally couldn’t have been scripted any better. In hindsight, maybe we should’ve known it would come in the form of Wartovo Puara Jnr; the most capped player in the club’s proud nine-year history and a beloved member of their inaugural QRL Cup squad in 2014.
The winning shot says it all.
Thanks for the memories, PNG.
NRLW Round 2 – There’s Always Next Week For…
…the Parramatta Eels
I’ll spend a little more time in my preview piece this week breaking down what I liked about the Eels in Round 2 but if you saw the highlights you can probably guess what I’m going to be talking about.
Parramatta scored two tries against the St George-Illawarra Dragons on Sunday and both were virtually carbon copies of each other. The Eels laid the platform on their right edge before a three-pass shift got fullback Gayle Broughton into space at a sliding defensive line on the left-hand side of the field where she proved very difficult to handle. She used her speed to burn halfback Rachael Pearson and her passing game to pitch Tiana Penitani into the exact same hole outside her opposite number.
In the first action Penitani managed to get to the line herself and in the second she threw a magic pass back inside to Broughton in support.
It’s a repeatable action that we should see every week here on out from the Eels this season, and it will be a focus for me in the NRLW Notepad on Thursday.
NRLW – Play of the Round
Regular readers will know I’m a big fan of Sydney Roosters halfback Raecene McGregor and she showed exactly why against the Brisbane Broncos on Saturday afternoon. She’s the best ballplayer in the competition for mine and she produced a stunning run and assist for fullback Samantha Bremner to score her first try in the NRLW since way back in 2018.
With players in support on her outside on tackle four, McGregor takes possession one-off the ruck and begins drifting sideways before exploding off her right foot to angle back in towards the ruck. She picks out Nita Maynard in the line and sells her a filthy dummy to sneak through the line and into the backfield.
Showing all the composure of a veteran playmaker, McGregor then draws in both fullback Hayley Maddick and centre Shenae Ciesiolka to pass Bremner into space. The veteran fullback shows she is still a force to be reckoned with in the NRLW as she burns the cover defence, fends off Ciesolka and slides her way to the line to score as the siren sounds.
Few playmakers in the NRLW have the skills, vision and awareness of McGregor with the ball in hand. She reads the defence superbly and can punish the smallest errors in the defence – like Maynard shooting off her line laterally here – to take advantage for her team. With the likes of Bremner, Isabelle Kelly and Jess Sergis lurking in the backfield around her when McGregor takes possession, the Roosters are looking very well equipped two games in to backup their maiden NRLW premiership of 2021.