League courses lauded

The National Sports

By ISAAC LIRI
TWO new coaching courses for juniors in rugby league are expected to rip rewards in the long run as rugby league thrives in Papua New Guinea.
The recently-launched courses are made possible through the Australian National Rugby League, in partnership with the Papua New Guinea Rugby Football League.
The courses are the modified games coaching (MGC) and the international games coaching (IGC) certificate courses, designed for schoolchildren which will complement the National Schools Rugby League programme launched four weeks ago.
Country general manager of the Australian NRL in PNG Mark Mom said the MGC was for coaches mentoring the 6 to 12 years-old group and the IGC was for those coaching 13 years-old and above.
“We are working on this in partnership with the PNGRFL because one of the key focuses is to develop the in-country body.
“This provides the opportunity for coaches, or anybody who wants to be a coach, to be accredited and as we build the framework, we target teachers in schools,” Mom said regarding the criteria to participate.
A total of 24 participants attended the course, which was facilitated by games coaching providers David Westley and Mike Castle, and the Pacific programme manager Michael Asensio.
Westley said they would be running the two courses three times every year.
The first course was conducted last month, the second will be in May and the final one at the end of the year.
The participants included 14 teachers, five volunteers and five staff members of the PNGRFL and Australian NRL in PNG.
Among them were 11 women coaches.
Mom said these coaches would go onto to coach schools in Port Moresby taking part in the National Schools Rugby League Programme and once the framework was in order, they would expand to other centres around the country.
Westley said as providers of this course, they would continue to assess participants until they were fully-accredited and recognised by the NRL.
Asensio said the two coaching courses were active in PNG, Fiji, Tonga and Samoa, with a long-term objective of one day seeing these countries provide high quality coaches capable of mentoring high quality players into the NRL.
PNGRFL chief executive officer Reatau Rau said: “These concepts will be a real game-changer.”