Affiliation poor: Tokam
By PARKER TAMBUA
HIGHLANDS has a strong rugby league following but the number of Papua New Guinea Rugby Football League-affiliated leagues is poor, says Highlands Confederate director Joe Tokam.
He told The National on Friday that lack of proper playing fields and the inability to afford player registration continue to hinder the game’s development in the region, especially rural areas. “Politicians should consider using their District Services Improvement Programme funds to construct more playing fields in their electorates,” Tokam said.
“Rugby league involves youths with majority of the population in the electorates.
“The other setback is the K50 annual registration fee for each player.
“Most of the youths who play rugby league are unemployed and can’t afford it.”
He said with more talents from the rural areas, there were plans in place to improve the Digicel Cup pathways.
“Each ward should organise rugby league competitions to select their best players in one club,” Tokam said.
“The club will affiliate to the district league to compete in its competition.
“Talents will then be selected in their district team to compete in Highlands Confederation selection trial.
“From there, the national selectors will monitor their performance and if the players do well, they can recommend them to the SP Hunters or to the Digicel Cup franchises.
“This is the pathway to develop young, rural talents to reach the national teams.”
One thought on “Affiliation poor: Tokam”
Totally concur with Joe Tokam’s vision which is the pathway players development. There are also some obstacles such as K50 player registration fee, standard playing field etc. Also there is a need for rugby league administrators to visit these rural leagues and run clinics (Coaching, Training, Refereeing, Administration etc) like once in a month. That will motivate the administrators and players of the leagues. Possibly the Digicel cup franchise owners should also visit these rural leagues assuring players and administrators of their support of pathway in making it into the digicel cup franchise on merit. Otherwise I have experienced in my years as a player before becoming an official, smaller leagues are slowly losing interest as they see that most of the attention is given to urban centres. What happened to the normal visits that zone administrators do on a monthly basis. PNGRFL should be planning to bring this back to life for the good of the code
Comments are closed.