Rugby power divided

STEVEN Kami, who claims to be the duly-elected president of the Papua New Guinea Rugby Football Union, has proceeded to lay out his vision for the code’s future with sevens rugby to be his main focus.
“I believe that rugby sevens is the future of rugby in PNG.  In rugby 15s, we will continue with our obligations with World Rugby — we with have no issues with that. But where we can make an immediate impact is with rugby sevens,” Kami said.
This was in direct opposition to the board headed by interim president Ben Frame, who took over the position when former president Richard Sapias stepped down to be Oceania Rugby president in May.
Frame said Kami’s group had no legal standing to claim to be the new executive because they had held an illegal annual general meeting and added that World Rugby was aware of the developments in PNG rugby.
Kami, who was elected by a group of individuals from Port Moresby’s rugby community on Nov 22, claimed his executive was the legally proper body to lead the sport based on the PNGRFU constitution because it had not held an AGM for the past seven years.
There were also claims that the current executive had not done enough to develop rugby and improve its standing in the region as well as deferring the AGM from September to next year (Jan 24) for affiliate unions to be compliant to the PNGRFU constitution.
Frame said Kami’s group needed to stop posing as the sport’s governing body and attend the AGM.
Kami and his executive wanted to use sevens a tool to develop the code in the country and ultimately to raise the profile of the nation on the international sporting arena.
“Our vision includes PNG qualifying for the Tokyo Olympics in 2020. We also want to qualify as a core nations in the HSBC World Sevens Series.
“All we ask is for five years to drive our vision for PNG rugby union forward in order to make PNG a better side in the world game.
“We need to focus on a five-year plan, secure funding for those five years and we need to bring in a world class coach from overseas.
“The coach must reside in the country, no more fly-in fly-out arrangements. We want two full time teams both men’s and women’s sevens.
“There are advantages that we have in PNG that Fiji, Samoa and Tonga don’t have.
“We have a lager economy, with the ability for us to put serious money and long term sponsorship is greater here than in the smaller island nations.
“The other advantage is that we have seven million people in PNG, surely among them we can find 25 people for each squad we require.”